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I 



7 



11 



MARTIN LUTHER 



I 




AND OTHER ESSAYS. 



f; h." hedge, 



AUTHOR OP RBASON IN RBLIGION, PRIMEVAL WORLD OP HBBRBW TRADITION, 
WAYS OP TUB SPIRIT, ATHEISM IN PHILOSOPHY, HOURS WITH 

GBRMAN CLASSICS, BTC 



f 



BOSTON: 
ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

1888. 






Copyright, 
By Roberts I 



f 



CONTENTS. 






FAOl 

Martin Luther 1 

Count Zinzbndorf and the Moravians .... 88 

Christianity in Conflict with Hellenism . . 64 

Feudal Society 09 

Conservatism and Reform 129 

Bev. William E. Channino, D.D 164 

Science and Faith 178 

Classic and Bomantio 184 

The Steps of Beauty 206 

Ethical Systems 225 

Ghost-Feeing 250 

Personauty 278 

The Theism of Beason and the Theism of Faith 306 



•"x 






ESSAYS, 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



IFrom (he Atlantic Monthly of December^ 1883,] 

T^HE power which presides over human destiny 
"^ and shapes the processes of history is wont 
to conceal its ulterior purpose from the agents it 
employs, who, while pursuing their special aims 
and fulfilling their appointed tasks, are, unknown 
to themselves, initiating a new era, founding a new 
world. 

iuch sign ificance attach es to th e name of Luther, 
one of that select band of providential men who 
stand conspicuous among their contemporaries as 
makers of history. For the Protestant Reforma- 
tion which he inaugurated is very imperfectly ap- 
prehended if construed solely as a schism in the 
Church, a new de parture in religion. In a larger 
view, it was our modern world, with its social 
developments, its liberties, its science, its new 

conditions of being, evolving itself from the old. 

. 1 



1= 



one event, that humanit 
progress in science and 
Luther and his work. 
cies, independent of the ri 
printing-press, the revival 
of a new continent, and 
astronomical findings, — h 
the regeneration of secula 

But this we may safely i 
goods of our estate — civil 
emancipation, individual sc 
unbound thought, the free 
characteristic of this New 1 
ance — we owe to the Saxc 

A compatriot of Luther, 1 
has made us familiar with tl 
of the Human Race. Yico 1 
a law of historic developm< 
that law a progressive imp 
tate. Lessing supplementec 
Vico with a more distinct 



ESSAYS. 3 

only one Bide of human nature. Man as a denizen 
of this earthly world has secular interests and a 
secular calling which may, in some future synthe- 
sis, be found to be the necessary complement of 
the spiritual, the other pole of the same social 
whole, but meanwhile require for their right 
development and full satisfaction another school, 
coordinate with but independent of the Church. 
That school is the nation. 

Now, the nation, in the ages following the decline 
of Rome, had had no proper status in Christian his- 
tory. There were peoples — Italian, French, Eng- 
lish, German — distributed in territorial groups, 
but no nation, no polity conterminous with the 
territorial limits of each country, compacted and 
confined by those limits, having its own inde- 
pendent sovereign head. France, Germany, Eng- 
land, were mere geographical expressions. The 
peoples inhabiting these countries had a common 
head in the Bishop of Rome, whose power might 
be checked by the rival German Empire when the 
Emperor was a man of force, a veritable ruler of 
men, and the papal incumbent an imbecile, but 
who, on the whole, was acknowledged supreme. 
Europe was ecclesiastically one; and the ecclesi- 
astical overruled, absorbed, the civil. 

But already, before the birth of Luther, from the 
dawn of the fourteenth century, the civil power had 



Bull had made the (Jerman 
papal dictation in the choi 
Meanwhile the Babylonish 
quent djarchy in the ponti 
prestige of the Roman See. 
teenth century we find the 
ity formally recognized by 
Council of Constance the 
vote by nations instead of 
having a distinct voice. T 
the nation had become a re 
Christendom. 

Another century was need< 
which bound in ecclesiastical 
the nations especially charged 
mankind. And a man was n( 
from personal experience the 
and whose moral convictions 
allow of compliance and com 
falsehood and deadly wrong, 
erance succeeded political To 



ESS A YS. 6 

of religious truth, that he claims our interest. As 
a theologian, as a thinker, he has taught us little. 
Men of inferior note have contributed vastly more 
to theological enlightenment and the science of 
I religion. Intellectually narrow, theologically bound 

and seeking to bind, his work was larger than his 
vision and better than his aim. The value of his 
thought is inconsiderable; the value of his deed 
as a providential liberator of thought is beyond 
computation. 

The world has no prevision of its heroes. Nature 
gives no warning when a great man is born. Had 
any soothsayer undertaken to point out, among the 
children cast upon the world in electoral Saxony 
on the 10th of November, 1483, the one who would 
shake Christendom to its centre, this peasant babe, 
just arrived in the cottage of Hans Luther at Eisle- 
ben, might have been the last on whom his prophecy 
would have fallen. The great man is unpredictable ; 
but reflection finds in the birth of Luther a peculiar 
fitness of place and time. Fitness of place, inas- 
much as Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, his 
native prince and patron, was probably the only one 
among the potentates of that day who, from sym- 
pathy and force of character, possessed the will and 
the ability to shield the reformer from prelatical 
wiles and the wrath of Rome. Fitness of time — a 
generation had scarcely gone by since the newly 



» 



o 



h('iiiisi»ln'rc hidden from Ki 
waves of tlie Atlantic, wlicj 
ciplc, born of Luther, was d 
congenial soil and to yield it 

More important than fitne 
the adaptation of the man 
There is an easy, levelling 
that men are the product of 
the necessary product of 
stances ; that Caesar and Mo! 
had they not lived precisely 
have plodded through life i 
graves without a record; a 
hand, quite ordinary men, if 
in which those heroes lived 
they did and accomplished 
would have overthrown th 
abolished idolatry, and broug 
revolution. 

But man and history are ] 
strued so. There is a law wl 



^ 



ESS A YS. 7 

the foundation of the world the man was selected to 
stand just there, and to do just that. The oppor- 
tunity does not make the man, but finds him. He 
is the providential man ; all the past is in him, all 
the future is to flow from him. 

What native qualifications did Luther bring to 
his work ? First of all, his sturdy Saxon "nature. 
TTEe Saxons are Germans of the Germans, and 
Luther was a Saxon of the Saxons, — reverent, pa- 
tient, laborious, with qiute an exceptional power of 
work and capacity of endurance ; simple, humble ; 
no visionary, no dreamer of dreams, but cautious, 
conservative, incorruptibly honest, true to the heart's 
core ; above all, courageous, firm, easily led when 
conscience seconded the leading, impossible to 
drive when conscience opposed, ecstatically devout, 
tender, loving: a strange compound of feminine 
softness and adamantine inflexibility. Contem- 
porary observers noticed in the eyes of the man, 
dark, flashing, an expression which they termed 
" daemonic." It is the expression of one susceptible 
of supernatural impulsion, — of being seized and 
borne on by a power which exceeds his conscious 
volition. 

In this connection I have to speak of one prop- 
erty in Luther which especially distinguishes spirit- 
ual heroes, — the gift of faith. The ages which 
preceded his coming have been called ^^the ages 



the want of it, nu'iital inc 
pendent vision. Faith is e^ 
tive, aggressive force; not 
propositions, but a maker 
pensations, of new ages. 

Faith is not a constitutic 
is no lot or tumulus assij 
hillocks of the brain. It i 
with him who has it, and gr 
but a gift of the Spirit, con 
are charged with a providt 
fellow-men. It is the seal 
test of their calling. In ot 
spiration ; it is the subjectiv 
lable force of which • inspin 
So much faith, so much in 
Deity. 

Inspiration is in no man 
In Luther it appears uneqi 
and flood, but always, in the 
history, answerincr to his npi 






ESS A YS. 9 

self of the man, against all the monitions not only 
of prudence, but of conscience as well. The voice 
of worldly prudence is soon silenced by earnest 
souls intent on noble enterprises of uncertain issue. 
What reformer of traditional wrongs has not been 
met by the warning, "That way danger lies"? 
But in Luther we have the rarer phenomenon of 
conscience itseK overcome by faith. We have the 
amazing spectacle of a righteous man defying his 
own conscience in obedience to a higher duty than 
conscience knew. For conscience is the pupil of 
custom, the slave of tradition, bound by prescrip- 
tion ; the safeguard of the weak, but, it may be, an 
offence to the strong; wanting initiative; unable 
of itself to lift itself to new perceptions and new 
requirements, whereby "enterprises of great pith 
and moment " " their currents turn awry, and lose 
the name of action." Conscience has to be new- 
bom when a new dispensation is given to the 
world. It was only thus that Christianity through 
Paul could disengage itself from Judaism, which 
had the old conscience on its side. 

In Luther faith was stronger than conscience. 
Had it not been so, we should not be called to 
celebrate his name. Of all his trials in those 
years of conflict which issued in final separation 
from Borne, the struggle with conscience was the 
sorest. However strong his personal conviction 



10 L UTHBR. 

that indulgences bought with money could not save 
from the penalties of ain, that the sitle of them wn^ 
a grievoua wrong; to declure that conviction, to act 
tipoii it, was to pit himself against the head of the 
Church, to whom he owed unconditional allegiance. 
It was revolt against legitimate authority, a violar 
tion of his priustly vows. So conscience pleaded. 
But Luther's better momenta sot aside these scru- 
ples, regarding them, as he did all that contradicted 
his strong intent, as suggestions of the deril. 
" IIow," whispered Satan, " if your doctrine be 
erroneous, ^ if all this confusion has been stirred 
op without just cause f How dare you preach what 
no one has ventured for so many centuries ? " 

Over all these intrusive voices admonishing, " Ton 
must not," a voice more imperative called to him, 
" Ton must ; " and a valor above all martial daring 
responded, *' I will." Here is where a higher power 
comes in to reinforce the human. When valor in 
a righteous cause rises to that pitch, it draws 
Heaven to its aide, it engages Omnipotence to 
back it 

Our knowledge of Lather's history is derived 
in great part from his own reminiscences and 
confessions. 

His boyhood was deeply shadowed by the stem- 
ness of domestic discipline. Severely and even 
cruelly chastised by conscientions but misjudging 



ESS A YS. 11 

parents, more careful to inspire fear than to cher- 
ish filial love, he contracted a shyness and timidity 
which kept back for years the free development 
of a noble nature. At school it was still worse; 
, • « the business of education was then conceived as a 
species of rhabdomancy, — a divining by means of 

I the rod the hidden treasures of the boyish mind. 

I He cannot forget, in after years, that fifteen times 

in one day the rod in his case was so applied. 

I " The teachers in those days " he says, " were 

tyrants and executioners ; the school, a prison and 
a hell." 

At a more advanced school in Eisenach, where 
the sons of the poor supported themselves by sing- 
ing before the doors of wei^thy citizens, who re- 
sponded with the fragments of their abundance, 
a noble lady. Dame Ursula Cotta, impressed by 
the fervor and vocal skill of the lad, gave him 
a daily seat at her table, and with it his first 
introduction to polite society, — a privilege which 

[ went far to compensate the adverse influences of 

I his earlier years. 

I At the age of eighteen he entered the University 

of Erfurt, then the foremost seminary in Germany, 
the resort of students from all parts of the land. 
The improved finances of his father sufiiced to 

; defray the cost of board and books. He elected 

for himself the department of philosophy, then 



12 LUTHER. 

embracing, together with logic, metaphysic, ani 
rhetoric, tlie study of the classics, which the re~ 
cent revival of lettere had brought into vogue. 
The Latin classics became his familiar friends, 
and are not imfrequenlly quoted in his writings. 
He made good use of the golden years, and re- 
ceived in due order, with high distinction, the 
degrees of bachelor and of master of arts. 

With atl this rich culture and the new ideas 
with which it flooded his mind, it does not appear 
that any doubt had been awakened in him of the 
truth of the old religion. He was still a devout 
Catholic ; he still prayed to the naints as the 
proper helpers in time of need. When accident- 
ally wounded by the sword which, according to 
student fashion, he wore at hia side, lying, as he 
thought, at the point of death, he invoiced, not God, 
but the Virgin, for aid. "Mary, help!" waa his 
cry. 

He was destined by his father for the legal pro- 
fession. It was the readiest road to wealth and 
power. Accordingly, he applied himself with all 
diligence to the study of lav, and had fitted him- 
self for the exercise of that calling ; when suddenly, 
in a company of friends assembled for social enter- 
tainment, he announced his intention to quit the 
world and embrace the monastic life. They ex- 
pressed their astonishment at this decision, and 



I 



ESS A YS. 18 

endeavored to dissuade him from such a course. 
In vain they urged him to reconsider his purpose. 
" Farewell ! " he said ; " we part to meet no more." 

What was it that caused this change in Luther's 
plan of life ? To account for a turn apparently so 
abrupt, it must be remembered that his religion 
hitherto, the fruit of his early training, had been 
a religion of fear. He had been taught to believe 
in an angry God, and the innate, deep corruption 
of human nature. He was conscious of no crime ; 
no youthful indiscretions, even, could he charge 
himself with : but morbid self-scrutiny presented 
him utterly sinful and corrupt. Only a life of 
good works could atone for that corruption. Such 
a life the monastic, with its renunciations, its 
prayers and fastings and self-torture, was then 
believed to be, — a life well-pleasing in the sight 
of God, the surest way of escape from final perdi- 
tion. Exceptional virtue tended in that direction. 
To be a monk was to flee from wrath and attain 
to holiness and heaven. 

All this had lain dimly, half-consciously, in 
Luther's mind, not ripened into purpose. The pur- 
pose was precipitated by a searching experience. 
Walking one day in the neighborhood of Erfurt, he 
was overtaken by a terrific thunder-storm. The 
lightning struck the ground at his feet. Falling 
on his knees, he invoked, in his terror, the interces- 



14 LUTHER. 

sion of Saint Anna, and vowed, if life were spared, 
to become a monk. Restored to his senses, he 
regretted the rash vow. His riper reason in after 
years convinced him that a vow ejaculated in a 
moment of terror imposed no moral obligation; 
but his uninstructed conscience could not then but 
regard it as binding. In spite of the just and 
angry remonstrances of his father, who saw with 
dismay his cherished plan defeated, the hard-earned 
money spent on his boy's education expended in 
vain, he sought and gained admission to the broth- 
erhood and cloisters of St. Augustine at Erfurt. 

His novitiate was burdened with cruel trials. 
The hardest and most repulsive offices were laid 
upon the new-comer, whose superiors delighted to 
mortify the master of arts with disgusting tasks. 
To the stern routine of cloister discipline he added 
self-imposed severities, more frequent fastings and 
watchings, undermining his health, endangering 
life. Harder to bear than all these were his in- 
ward conflicts, — fears and fightings, agonizing self- 
accusations, doubts of salvation, apprehensions of 
irrevocable doom. He sought to conquer heaven 
by mortification of the flesh, and despaired of the 
result. Finally, encouraged by Staupitz, the vicar- 
general of the Order, and guided by his own study 
of the new-found Scriptures, he came to perceive 
that heaven is not to be won in that way. Follow- 



ESSAYS. 15 

ing the lead of Saint Paul and Augustine, he reached 
the conclusion which formed thenceforth the staple 
of his theology and the point of departure in his 
controversy with Rome, — the sufficiency of divine 
grace, and justification by faith. 

In the second year of his monastic life he was 
ordained priest, and in the year following promoted 
to the chair of theology in the new University of 
Wittenberg, where he soon became famous as a 
preacher. 

In 1511 he was sent on a mission to Rome, in 
company with a brother monk. When he came 
within sight of the city he fell upon his knees and 
saluted it: ^^Hail, holy Rome, thrice consecrated 
by the blood of the martyrs ! " Arrived within the 
walls, the honest German was inexpressibly shocked 
by what he found in the capital of Christendom, — 
open infidelity, audacious falsehood, mockery of 
sacred things, rampant licentiousness, abominations 
incredible. The Rome of Julius 11. was the Boma 
rediviva of Caligula and Nero, — pagan in spirit, 
pagan in morals, a sink of iniquity. It was well 
that Luther had personal experience of all this; 
the remembrance of it served to lighten the struggle 
with conscience when called to contend against 
papal authority. But then such contest never en- 
tered his mind; he was still a loyal son of the 
Church. He might mourn her corruption, but would 



16 LUTHER. 

not queation her infallibility. Like other pilgrims 
zealouB of good works, he climbed on his knees 
the twenty-eight steps of the Santa Scala. While 
engaged in that penance there flashed on his mind, 
like a revelation from Heaven, declaring the futility 
of such observances, the saying of the prophet, 
" The just shall live by his faith." 

Returned to Wittenberg, he was urged by Staupitz 
to study for the last and highest academic honor, 
that of doctor of philosophy. The already over- 
tasked preacher shrank from this new labor. " Herr 
Staupitz," he said, " it will be the death of me." 
" All right," answered Staupitz. " Our Lord carries 
on extensive operations ; he has need of clever men 
above. If you die you will be one of his councillors 
in heaven." 

I now come to the turning-point in Luther's life, 
— the controversy with Rome on the subject of in- 
dulgences, which ended in the schism known as 
the Protestant Reformation. 

Leo X., in the year 1516, ostensibly in the in- 
terest of a new church of St. Peter in Rome, 
sent forth a Bull according absolution from the 
penalties of sin to all who should purchase the 
indulgences offered for sale by his commissioners. 
Indulgence, according to the theory of the Church, 
was dispensation from the penance otherwise re- 
quired for priestly absolation. It was not pretended 



ESS A YS. 17 

that priestly absolution secured divine forgiveness 
and eternal salvation. It was absolution from tem- 
poral penalties due to the Church ; but popular 
superstition identified the one with the other. More- 
over, it was held that the supererogatory merits 
of Christ and the saints were available for the use 
of sinners. They constituted a treasury confided 
to the Church, whose saving virtue the head of 
the Church could dispense at discretion. In this 
case the application of that fund was measured 
by pecuniary equivalents. Christ had said, " How 
hardly shall they that have riches enter the king- 
dom of heaven." Leo said in effect, " How easily 
may they that have riches enter the kingdom of 
heaven," since they have the quid pro quo. For 
the poor it was not so easy; and this was one 
aspect of the case which stimulated the opposition 
of Luther. Penitence was nominally required of 
the sinner; but proofs of penitence were not ex- 
acted. Practically, the indulgence meant impunity 
for sin. A more complete travesty of the Gospel — 
laughable, if not so impious — could hardly be con- 
ceived. The faithful themselves were shocked by 
the shameless realism which characterized the pro- 
clamations of the German commissioner, Tetzel. 

Luther wrote a respectful letter to the Arch- 
bishop of Mainz, praying him to put a stop to 

the scandal, — little dreaming that the prelate had 

2 



• » h k ^ ' A h M. AAV *,*l'»/V*.VA\-.».«. A\_AV»k\„ V* 1 

resource, by way of ap})eal 
science, ou the olst of Oc 
his famous ninety-five thes 
church of All Saints. The 
assertions, but propositions 
80 inclined. Nevertheless, t 
tion put upon them was the 
indulgences, and, hj implic 
of the source from which t 
It is doubtful if Luther 
Bigni&cance of the step he lu 
then dream of secession f ron 
more astonished than grat: 
that his theses and other ut 
had, within the space of fo 
Germany, and that he had 
of Christendom. More thai 
irrevocable act he seems 1 
initiative; and though he 
would fain have sunk out c 



ESS A YS. 19 

to rejoin with more decisive declarations. The con- 
troversy reached the ear of the Pope, who inclined 
at first to regard it as a local quarrel which would 
soon subside, but was finally persuaded to despatch 
a summons requiring Luther to appear in Rome 
within sixty days to be tried for heresy. Rome 
might summon, but Luther knew too well the prob- 
able result of such a trial to think of obeying the 
summons. The spiritual power might issue its 
mandates, but the temporal power was needed to 
execute its behests. Would the temporal, in this 
case, co-operate with the spiritual? There had 
been a time when no German potentate would have 
hesitated to surrender a heretic. But Germany was 
getting tired of Roman dictation and ultramontane 
insolence. The German princes were getting im- 
patient of the constant drain on their exchequer by 
a foreign power. Irrespective of the right or wrong 
of his position theologically considered, the ques- 
tion of Luther's extradition was one of submission 
to authority long felt to be oppressive. Only per- 
sonal enemies, like Eck and Emser and Tetzel, 
would have him sent to Rome. Miltitz, who had 
been deputed to deal with him, confessed that an 
army of twenty-five thousand men would not be 
sufficient to take him across the Alps, so wide- 
spread and so powerfully embodied was the feeling 
in his favor. The Ritter class, comprising men 



20 LUTHER. 

like Franz von Sickingen and Ulrich von Hutten, 
were on his side; so were the Humanists, — apostles 
of the new culture, which opposed itself to the old 
mediseyal Scholasticism. The Emperor Maximilian 
would have the case tried on German soil. Con- 
spicuous above all, his chief defender, was Luther's 
own sovereign, the Elector of Saxony, Frederick 
the Wise. Humanly speaking, but for him the 
Reformation would have been crushed at the start, 
and its author with it. Frederick was not at this 
time a convert to Luther's doctrine, but insisted 
that his subject should not be condemned until 
tried by competent judges and refuted on scrip- 
tural grounds. He occupied the foremost place 
among the princes of Germany. On the death of 
Maximilian, 1519, he was regent of the Empire, 
and had the chief voice in the election of the new 
Emperor. Without his consent and co-operation it 
was impossible for Luther's enemies to get posses- 
sion of his person. For this purpose Leo X., then 
Pope, wrote a flattering letter, accompanied by the 
coveted gift of the " golden rose," — supreme token 
of pontifical good-will. "This rose," wrote Leo, 
"steeped in a holy chrism, sprinkled with sweet- 
smelling musk, consecrated by apostolic blessing, 
symbol of a sublime mystery, — may its heavenly 
odor penetrate the heart of our beloved son and 
dispose him to comply with our request" 



k 



gaamBBOsaassssL 






ESSA YS. 21 

The request was not complied with, but by way 
of alternative it was proposed that Luther should 
be tried by a papal commissioner in Germany. So 
Leo despatched for that purpose the Cardinal de 
Vio, of Gaeta, his plenipotentiary, commonly known 
as Cajetan. A conference was held at Augsburg, 
which, owing to the legate's passionate insistence on 
unconditional retractation, served but to widen the 
breach. The efforts of Miltitz, another appointed 
mediator, met with no better success. 

Meanwhile Luther had advanced with rapid and 
enormous strides in the line of divergence from the 
Catholic Church. The study of the Scriptures had 
convinced him that the primacy of the Roman 
bishop had no legitimate foundation. The work of 
Laurentius Valla, exposing the fiction of Constan- 
tine^s pretended donation of temporal sovereignty 
in Rome, had opened his eyes to other falsehoods. 
He proclaimed his conclusions, writing and pub- 
lishing, in Latin and German, with incredible dili- 
gence. His " Address to the Christian Nobility of 
the German Nation concerning the Melioration of 
the Christian State," the most important of his pub- 
lications, anticipates nearly all the points of the 
Protestant reform, and many which were not ac- 
complished in Luther's day. Tlic writing spread 
and sped through every province of Germany, 
as if borne on the wings of the wind. An edition 



22 LUTHER. 

of four thonsand copies was cxliausted in a fee 
daya. It was the Magna Chartii uf a dcw ecclesias 
tical State. 

But now the thunderbolt was launched which 
his adversarii's trusted, should smite iho heretic t< 
death and acatter all liis following. On the 16th o 
Juno, 1520, Leo issued a Bull coudemuiug Luth 
er'a writings, commanding that they be publicly 
bnmed wherever found, and that their author, un 
leaa withm the space of sisty days he recanted hii 
errors, allowing siity more for the tidings of hii 
recantation to reach Rome, should be seized anc 
delivered up for the punishment doe to a refractotj 
heretic. All magistrate a and all citizens wen 
required, on pain of ecclesiastical penalty, to aid in 
arresting him and his followers and sending then: 
to Rome. The papal legates, Aleander and Carac- 
cioli, were appointed bearers of a missive from th( 
Pope to Duke Frederick, commanding him to havt 
the writings of Luther burned, and either to ez 
ecnte judgment on the heretic himself, or else tc 
deliver him up to the papal tribunal. The Electoi 
replied that he had no part in Luther's movement 
but that his writings must be refuted before h{ 
Toidd .order their burning ; that their author hac 
been condemned imheard ; that his case must be 
tried by impartial judges in some place where ii 
should be safe for him to appear in person. 



I 



ESS A YS. 2? 

Miltitz persuaded Luther, as a last resource, tc 
write to the Pope a conciliatory letter, disavowing 
all personal hostility and expressing due reverence 
for his Holiness. He did write. But such a letter ! 
An audacious satire, which, under cover of personal 
respect and good-will, compassionates the Pope at 
^^a sheep among wolves," and characterizes th( 
papal court as " viler than Sodom or Gomorrah." 

When the Bull reached Wittenberg it was treated 
by Luther and his friends with all the respect whicl 
it seemed to them to deserve. On the 10th o1 
December, 1520, a large concourse of students an<] 
citizens assembled in the open space before the 
Elster gate ; a pile was erected and fired by a resi 
dent graduate of the university ; and on it Luther 
with his own hands, solenmly burned the Bull and 
the papal decretals, amid applause which, like the 
" embattled farmers* " shot at Concord in 1775, wsa 
" heard round the world." 

So the last tie was severed which bound Luthei 
to Rome. After that contumacious act there wat 
no retreat or possibility of pacification. 

But though Luther had done with Rome, Rome 
had not yet done with him. When Leo found thai 
he could not wrest the heretic from the guardian 
ship of Frederick, he had recourse to imperial aid 
The newly elected Emperor, Charles V., a youth o: 
twenty-one, in whose blood were blended three roya 



would not, if he could, conij^d 
a prisoner to Rome, lie clic 
in his own court, and only w 
trial an irreclaimable heretic t 
such. 

An imperial Diet was about 1 
of Worms. Thither Charles d 
bring the refractory monk. Fr 
office; but Luther declared ti 
summoned him he would obey 
call of God. To his friend S] 
his refusal, he wrote that he w( 
there were as many devils oppc 
were tiles on the roofs of the he 

The summons came, accompa 
safe-conduct covering the journ 
place of trial. Luther compile 
that Charles would repeat the 
mund, which had blasted that 
infamy and incarnadined Boh, 
blood. The lournev wna nr^f^ i 



ESS A Ys. a 

nounced with the blast of a trmnpet his approach 
The citizens left their breakfasts to witness th 
entry. Preceded by the imperial herald and fol 
lowed by a long cavalcade, the stranger wa 
escorted to the quarters assigned him. Alightinj 
from his carriage, he looked round upon the multi 
tude and said, " God will be witii me." It wa 
then that Aleander, the papal legate, remarked th< 
daemonic glance of his eye. People of all classe 
visited him in his lodgings. 

On the following day he was called to the episco 
pal palace, and made his first appearance before th< 
Diet. A pile of books was placed before him 
"Are these your writings?" The titles weri 
called for, and Luther acknowledged them to h 
his. Would he retract the opinions expressed ii 
them, or did he still maintain them ? He begge< 
time for consideration ; it was a question of faith 
of the welfare of souls, of the word of God. A da; 
for deliberation was allowed him, and he was re 
manded to his lodgings. On the way the peopL 
shouted applause, and a voice exclaimed, " Blesse( 
is the womb that bare thee ! " But the impressioi 
made on the court was not favorable. He had no 
shown the front that was expected of him. He hac 
seemed timid, irresolute. The Emperor remarked 
" That man would never make a heretic of me." 

His sclf-communings in the interim, and hii 



26 LUTHER. 

prayer, which has come down to us, show 1 
deeply he felt the import of the crisis ; how ^ 
fire burned/' as he mused of its probable isi 
knowing that the time was at hand when he mi 
be called to seal his testimony with his blood. 

'^ Ah, God, thou my €k)d! stand by me agai 
the reason and fiie wisdom of all the world I T 
must do it; it is not my canse, but thine, 
my own person I haye nothing to do with tl 
great lords of the earth. Gladly would I h 
quiet days and be nnperplezed. But thine is 
cause ; it is just and eternal. Stand by me, t 
eternal God ! I confide in no man. Hast thou 
chosen me for this purpose, I ask thee? Bi 
know of a surety that thou hast chosen me." 

On the 18th he was summoned for the sec 
time, and the question of the previous day - 
renewed. He explained at length, first in La 
then in German, that his writings were of vari 
import: those which treated of moral topics 
papists themselves would not condemn; \h 
which disputed papal authority, and those addres 
to private individuals, although the language mi 
be more violent than was seemly, he could no 
conscience revoke. Unless he were refuted ii 
the Scriptures, he must abide by his opinions, 
was told that the court was not there to discuss 
! opinions ; they had been already condemned by 



• * 



SK 



f^gmmm»M! 



ESS A YS. 2*! 

Council of Constance. Finally, the question nar 
, rowed itself to this : Did he believe that Councils 

could err? More specifically, Did he believe the 
Council of Constance had erred ? Luther appreci 
ated the import of the question. He knew that hit 
answer would alienate some who had thus far be 
friended him; for however they might doubt th( 
infallibility of the Pope, they all believed Councils 
to be infallible. But he did not hesitate. ^^ I do 8( 
believe." The fatal word was spoken. The Em 
peror said: ^^It is enough; the hearing is con 
eluded." 

The shades of evening had gathered over thi 
assembly. To the friends of Luther they mighi 
seem to forebode the impending close of his earthlj 
day. Then suddenly he uttered with a loud voice 
in his native idiom, those words which German] 
will remember while the city of Worms has om 
stone left upon another, or the river that laves hei 
shall find its way to the German Ocean : " Hiei 
steh' ich, ich kann nicht anders; Gott hilf mir 
Amen ! " 

By the light of blazing torches the culprit wa£ 

conducted from the council-chamber, the Spanish 

courtiers hissing as he went, while among th( 

Germans many a heart no doubt beat high in re 

I spouse to that brave ultimatum of their fellow 

countryman. 



tlii'eals ol" liis riicniirs. 
trial was ended. The arc 
assailed a poor monk, iio\ 
entreaty, and found him u 

i 

That beats upon the big 

had broken powerless agaii 
single breast. 

The curtain falls; when 
the Wartburg, the ancestra 
Thiiringen, where Saint Eli; 
in the Boman calendar, disi 
and bore the heavy burden c 
Emperor, true to his promis 
safe return of Luther to Witi 
ever, that, once returned, h< 
as a heretic. At the instig 
, erick, the protecting escor 
way, and put to flight by an 
was taken captive and borm 
burp:, wherr>. rii'o.^-'''- ^ 



umm 



i 

r 



t 
\ 

r 



ESSA YS. 29 

— his translation of the New Testament, afterward 
supplemented by his version of the Old. 

A word here respecting the merits of Luther as 
a writer. His compatriots have claimed for him 
the inestimable service of founder of the German 
language. He gave by his writings to the New 
High German, then competing with other dialects, 
a currency which has made it ever since, with 
slight changes, the language of German literature, 
— the language in which Kant reasoned and Goethe 
sang. His style is not elegant, but charged with a 
rugged force, a robust simplicity, which makes for 
I itself a straight path to the soul of the reader. His 

i words were said to be "half battles;" call them 

ij rather whole victories, for they conquered Ger- 

l many. The first condition of national unity is 

' unity of speech. In this sense Luther did more 

for the unification of Germany than any of her 
sons, from Henry the Fowler to Bismarck. " We 
conceded, " says Gervinus, " to no metropolis, to no 
learned society, the honor of fixing our language, 
but to the man who better than any other could hit 
the hearty, healthy tone of the people. No diction- 
ary of an academy was to be the canon of our 
tongue, but that book by which modern humanity 
is schooled and formed, and which in Germany, 
through Luther, has become, as nowhere else, a 
people's book." 



tlie old ; preaching dail; 

writing and publishing ii 

lie schools, arranging a r 

substitute for the Latin 

chism (a model in its ki: 

appurtenances of worship. 

on their return from '. 

the new temple with one . 

other, contending against 

Mystics, the Iconoclasts, tl 

must be confessed, with 

wrath, spurning all that w< 

theology, — as when he re 

the Swiss, who denied the I 

charist. When the fury of 

desolating Germany, he ^ 

against both parties, — an 

their cruel oppressions, rep 

attempting to overcome evil 

His reform embraced, aloi 
from tliA r\^A -r.^-'-. 



ym. 



f 



ESSAYS. 81 

wives, and in 1525, in the forty-third year of liis 
age, he encouraged the practice by his example. 
He married Catherine von Bora, an escaped nun, 
for whom he had previously endeavored to find 
another husband. She was one of the many who 
had been placed in convents against their will, and 
forced to take the veil. It was no romantic attach- 
ment which induced Luther to take this step, but 
partly the feeling that the preacher's practice should 
square with his teaching, and partly an earnest de- 
sire to gratify his father, whose will he had so 
cruelly traversed in becoming a monk. To marry was 
to violate his monastic vow ; but he had long since 
convinced hunself that a vow made in ignorance, 
under extreme pressure, was not morally binding. 

Pleasing pictures of Luther's domestic life are 
given us by contemporary witnesses and the re- 
ports of his table-talk. In the bosom of his family 
he found an asylum from the wearing labors and 
never-ending conflicts of his riper years. Tliere he 
shows himself the tender father, the trusting and 
devoted husband, the open-handed, gay, and enter- 
taining host. His Katchen proved in every respect 
an all-sufficient helpmeet. And it needed her skilful 
economy and creative thrift to counterbalance his 
inconsiderate and boundless generosity. For never 
was one more indifferent to the things of this world, 
more sublimely careless of the morrow. 



82 LUTBSR. 

The remaining years of Lothcv'B life vere deeply 
involved in the fortimeB of tihe Befonoation, it« 
Btni^Ies and its triiimphB,ito still advancing steps, 
in spite of oppoBition from vithont and dissenBions 
within. They dereloped no new features, irhile 
they added intensity to smna <tf ilie old, notably to 
his old impatience of falsehood and contradiction. 
They exhibit him Btill toOii^ and teeming, praying, 
agonizing, stimulating, instmoting, enconra^ng; 
often prostrate frith bodily disease and intense 
BDfFering ; and still, amid all diBappointments, 
tribalationB, and tortnres, breasting and boffeting 
with high-liearted valor the adverse tide which 
often threatened to overwhelm him. 

Thus laboring, loving, suffering, exulting, he 
reached his sixty-fourth year, and died on the 18th 
of February, 1546. The last words he uttered ex- 
pressed unshaken confidence in bis doctrine, trium- 
phant faith in his cause. 

By a fit coincidence death overtook him in Eis- 
leben, the place of his birth, where he had been 
tarrying on a journey connected with affairs of 
the Church. 

The Count Mansfeld,who with his noble wife had 
ministered to Luther in his last illness, desired that 
his mortal remains should be interred in his do- 
main ; but the Elector, now John Frederick, claimed 
them for the city of Wittenberg, and sent a depu- 



asisstmsi^sssF^s' 



ESSAYS. 33 

tatdon to take them in charge. In Halle, on the 
way, memorial services were held, in which the 
university and the magnates of the city took part. 
In all the towns through which the procession 
passed, the bells were rung, and the inhabitants 
thronged to pay their respects to the great deceased. 
In Wittenberg a military cortege accompanied the 
procession to the church of the Electoral palace, 
where the obsequies were celebrated with imposing 
demonstrations, and a mourning city sent forth its 
population to escort the body to the grave. 

In the year following, the Emperor Charles, hav- 
ing taken the Elector prisoner, stood as victor beside 
that grave. The Duke of Alva urged that the bones 
of the heretic should be exhumed and publicly 
burned ; but Charles refused. ^^ Let him rest ; he 
has found his judge. I war not with the dead." 

I have presented our hero in his character of 
reformer. I could wish, if time permitted, to ex- 
hibit him in otlier aspects of biographical interest. 
I would like to speak of him as a poet, author of 
hynms, into which he threw the fervor and swing 
of his impetuous soul ; as a musical composer, ren- 
dering in that capacity effective aid to the choral 
service of his Church. I would like to speak of him 
as a humorist and satirist, exhibiting the playful- 
ness and pungency of Erasmus without his cynicism ; 

as a lover of nature, anticipating our own age in his 

3 




84 

admiring Bympathy Witti ttie beantieB of esrOi and 
sky ; as the first nrtonlist of his day, a doM ob- 
server of the habits d TegetaUfl koA animal life ; 
as a leader in the mj at teaderneai for the brute 
creation. I wonld like also, in the spirit of ist- 
partial justice, to speak of hb fitnlta and Infirmitiei^ 
in which Lessing rejoiced, ai ihowing him not 
too far removed from ttie level of oar commtai 
hmnanity. 

But these are pt^ta on Thieh.I am not per- 
mitted to dwell. That phase of his life Thieh 
gives to the name of Lnther its woridJustoric aig- 
nilicance is comprised lu the period extending from 
the year 1517 to the year 1529, — from the posting 
of the ninety-^ve theses, to the Diet of Spires, 
from whose decisions German princes, dissenting, 
received the name of Protestants, and which, fol- 
lowed by the league of Smalcald, assured the suc- 
cess of his cause. 

And now, in brief, what was that canse ? The 
Protestant Reformation, I have said, is not to be 
regarded as a mere theolc^cal or ecclesiastical 
movement, however Luther may have meant it as 
soch. In a larger view it was secular emancipar 
tion, deliverance of the nations that embraced it 
from an irresponsible theocracy, whose main in- 
terest was the consolidation and perpetuation of 
lia own dominion. 



ifls^asfi^Misv 



ESSAYS. 



35 



I 



A true theocracy must always be the ideal of 
society; that is, a social order in which God as 
revealed in the moral law shall be practically recog- 
nized, inspiring and shaping the polity of nations. 
^ All the Utopias, from Plato down, are schemes for 
the realization of that ideal. But the attempt 
to ground theocracy on sacerdotalism has always 
proved, and must always prove, a failure. The 
tendency of sacerdotalism is to separate sanctity 
from righteousness. It invests an order of men 
with a power irrespective of character, — a power 
whose strength lies in the ignorance of those on 
whom it is exercised ; a power which may be, and 
often, no doubt, is, exercised for good, but which, 
in the nature of man and of things, is liable to 
such abuses as that against which Luther con- 
tended when priestly absolution was affirmed to 
be indispensable to salvation, and absolution was 
venal, when impunity for sin was offered for sale, 
when the alternative of heaven or hell was a question 
of money. 

It is not my purpose to impugn the Church of 
Rome as at present administered, subject to the 
checks of modem enlightenment and the criticism 
of dissenting communions. But I cannot doubt 
that if Rome could recover the hegemony which 
Luther overthrew, could once regain the entire 
control of the nations, the same iniquities, the same 



36 LUTHER. 

abominations, which characterized the ancient rule 
would reappear. The theory of the Church of 
Rome ia fatally adverse to the beat intcrestH of 
hmnauity, light, liberty, progress. That theory 
makes a human individual the rightful lord of the 
earth, all potentates and powers beside his riglitful 
subjects. 

Infallible the latest council has declared him. 
Infallible ! The assertion ia an insult to reason. 
Nay, more, it is blasphemy, when wo think of the 
attribute of Deity vested in a Boniface VIIL, an 
Alexander VI., a John XXIII. lufaUible ? No! 
Forever no ! Fallible, as human nature must 
always b& 

Honor and everlasting thanks to the man who 
broke for us the spell of papal autocracy, who 
rescued a portion, at least, of the Christian world 
from the paralyzing grasp of a power more to be 
dreaded than any temporal despotism, — a power 
which rules by seducing the will, by capturing the 
conscience of its subjects : the bondage of the 
soul ! Luther alone of all the men whom history 
names, by faith and courage, by all his endow 
menta, — ay, and by all hie limitations, — was fitte 
to accomplish that saving work, a work whos 
full import he could not know, whose far-reachin 
consequences he had not divined. They shape ou 
life. Modem civilization, liberty, science, bocie 



^■■iM 



ESS A YS. 37 

progress, attest the world-wide scope of the Prot- 
estant reform, whose principles are independent 
thought, freedom from ecclesiastical thrall, defiance 
of consecrated wrong. Of him it may be said, in ^ 
a truer sense than the poet claims for the architects , 
of mediaBval minsters, " Ho buildcd better than he 
knew." Our age still obeys the law of that move- 
ment whose van he led, and the latest age will 
bear its impress. Here, amid the phantasms that 
crowd the stage of human history, was a grave 
reality, a piece of solid nature, a man whom it is 
impossible to imagine not to have been ; to strike 
whose name and function from the record of his 
time would be to despoil the centuries following 
of gains that enrich the annals of mankind. 

Honor to the man whose timely revolt checked 
the progress of triumpliant wrong, who wrested the 
heritage of God from sacerdotal hands, defying the 
traditions of immemorial time ! He taught us lit- 
tle in the way of theological lore ; what we prize 
in him is not the teacher, but the doer, the man. 
His theology is outgrown, — a thing of the past ; 
but the spirit in which he wrought is immortal: 
that spirit is evermore the rencwer and savior of 
the world. 




COUNT ZINZENDOEF AND THE 
MORAVIANS. 

■\ T THEN tlie late Dr. Greenwood, tlio beloved 
■ ■ pastor of Kiug's Chapel, Boston, published, 
in 1830, the coUectiou of " Paalms aud Hjmns for 
Christian "Worship" atUl used by that church, he 
made us acquainted with certain hymns, before un- 
known to most of us, bearing the title Moravian. 
Their deep inwardness, their trustful, undogmatic 
piety, made tbem at once the favorites of our wor- 
shipping assemblies. I need but cite their initial 
Terses : — 

" Thou hiddeo love of God, whooe height;, 

WlioBe depth unfathomed, no man knows." 

" Oh draw me, Father, after Thee I 
So ihall I mn, and never Hie." 

" O Thon to whose all-searching sight 
The darkneaa ahineth aa the light." 

*' Give to the winds thy feus, 
Hope, and be undismayed." 

" iiy Boul before Thee pnxtrate lies; 
To Thee, het amroe, my spirit flies." 



ESS A YS. 39 

. We welcomed these pieces as precious contri- 
butions to our stock of devotional poetry. We 
accepted the title "Moravian" with no adequate 
understanding, I think, of the import of that term. 
The geographical appellation taught us nothing as 
to the tenets, the principles, and discipline of the 
people so named. Of this sect and their leader, 
Count Zinzendorf, I now purpose to speak. 

The religionists whom we call Moravian are 
known among themselves as the " United Breth- 
ren," Unitas Fratrum. Such a fraternity had ex- 
isted in Bohemia from the days of John Huss, in 
the early part of the fifteenth century, until 1627, 
when, amid the desolations of the Thirty Years' 
War, in common with all non-Catholic churches 
it was, as an organization, forcibly abolished, 
though single families here and there still cherished 
in secret the old tradition. 

The Moravian Brotherhood proper had an inde- 
pendent origin in the ministry of Christian David, 
a zealous evangelist, seceder from the Roman to 
the Lutheran Church. This man gathered a band 
of followers in Lusatia, and initiated in 1722 a 
settlement on one of the estates of Count Zinzen- 
dorf, then absent in Dresden, assigned to them by 
his steward with Ixis written consent. The place 
was situated at the foot of the Hutberg, and was 
named Hermhut, LorcTs-care. When the existence 



40 COUNT ZINZBNDORF. 

of this asylum became known, it attracted not only 
Protestant converts from Moravia who were sub- 
ject to persecution at iiome, but also the scattered 
remnants of tlic old Boliemian fellowship, and thus 
became the historic successor and continuator of 
that ancient Brotherhood, witness of a, foiled refor- 
mation of the Church which antedated that of 
Luther by a hundred years. 

Herrnhut was phintcd ; but the further develop- 
ments and triumphs of Moravian Christianity de- 
manded and found a loader who added to the piety 
and zeal of Clu-istian David quite other and peculiar 
eudoH'mcnts. 

Among the heroes of the eighteenth century 
there are three who are specially distinguished 
as leaders in religion, — Emanuel Swcdenborg, 
Count Nicolaus Ludwig Ziuzendorf, and John 
Wesley. Swcdenborg, intellectually far superior 
to the other two, was not the intentional founder 
of a sect. The sect which has based itself on his 
doctrine was not of his ordering. He was no 
organizer. It was not his design that the New 
Church which he proclaimed should pose as a sep- 
arate body ; rather, it -was to act as a leavening 
and transforming element in existing communions. 
The other two possessed in an eminent degree the 
(^ft of practical leadership. 

Zinzendorf, our present subject, was bom in 



■flMMBMMHb 



ESS A YS. 41 

Dresden on the 26th of May in the year 1700, — by 
twelve years the junior of Swedenborg, by three 
years the senior of Wesley. His father, a noble- 
man of ancient lineage who held the high position 
of prime minister at the court of the Elector of 
Saxony, died six weeks after the birth of his son. 
The mother, Charlotta Justina, Baroness of Gcrs- 
dorf , married a second husband ; and young Zinzen- 
dorf , at the age of four, was committed to the care 
of his maternal grandmother in Hennersdorf, in 
Upper Lusatia. This lady, a friend of the famous 
Pietist, Philip Spcner, who had officiated as god- 
father at Zinzendorf's baptism, made it her chief 
end to awaken and foster religious sensibility in 
her charge. In particular she endeavored to im- 
press upon him w^hat to her was the ground truth 
of Christianity, — that the everlasting God, Author 
and Ruler of the universe, had suffered and died for 
our sake, and therefore claimed his uttermost grati- 
tude and devotion. The impression thus stamped 
upon the soul of the child became the ruling idea 
of the man, — the master-motive of all his doing and 
striving. Through life he knew no God but Christ 
As a preacher ho instructed his hearers that " God, 
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is not our father 
proper ; to think so is one of the chief errors cur- 
rent in Christendom." " The Father of our Lord 
is to us what in the world is called a grandfather 



42 COUNT ZINZENDORF. 

or father-in-law." "They who preach God tlie 
Father are profesBors of Satan." 

At the age of eleven ho was put to school at the 
paedagogium in Hallo, of which the pious Francke 
was tlien director, and in 1716 was sent to the 
University of Wittenherg to study law, A profi- 
cient in the customary branches of polite learning, 
especially in the languages, of which he wrote and 
spoke Latin with great fluency, his chief diBtinctioa 
even then, in those academic years, was that of a 
religious zealot. He held prayer-meetings in his 
chambers, organized clubs for mutual edification, 
etrovc to convert, and -sometimes succeeded in con- 
vertii^, loose associateB who would tempt him to 
vicious indulgence. At the same time his high 
breeding, hie frank, easy manners, and freedom 
from all that savors of sanctimoniousnesB precluded 
the aversion, not to say contempt, which college 
youth are apt to entertain for fellow-etudents of the 
[HOUB type. 

After leaving the university, in accordance with 
the fashion of the young nobility of that day, he 
spent two years in travel. In the course of his 
joiuneying his piety received at Diisseldorf on the 
Bhine a fresh impulse from the contemplation of 
Correggio'a picture of the Suffering Christ. F 
read the inscription: "Thus have I suffered f 
thee : what hast thou done for me ? " and then ai 



ESSA YS. 48 

there renewed his vows of a life devoted to the 
service of Christ. 

In Paris he made the acquaintance of Cardinal 
Noailles, with whom ho afterward corresponded. 
Evangelical as he was, and unproselytable, he gained 
the affection of the Romish prelate by virtue of 
that universalism of the heart which is independent 
of forms and creeds. His rank procured for him 
a favorable reception at the court of Philip of 
Orleans ; but the dissolute manners of the Regency 
repelled the unspotted youth. He found his best 
entertainment at the riding-school, where he won 
admiration by his superior horsemanship. 

On attaining his majority, in compliance with the 
wishes of his uncle and guardian, who had destined 
him for civil service, he accepted the post of Coun- 
cillor of Justice in Dresden. But his heart was not 
in it, and after five years' trial he resigned his 
office, resolved to devote himself to what he regarded 
as his true calling, — that of Christian evangelist. 
He had no desire to separate himself from the 
Lutheran Church. His purpose was to form within 
that Church communities of such as desired to lead 
a more strictly religious life. But finding a com- 
munity with similar views already established on 
his own domain, after careful study of their disci- 
pline and aims he was finally induced to make 
Herrnhut the basis of his operations, and in 1727 



44 COUNT ZINZENDORF. 

accepted the office of spiritual superintendent of 
the colony of which he was already the legal ma^- 
Btrate and liege lord. Qe had previously token to 
wife Countess Erdmuth von Reuss, aistcr of Count 
Reuas, his lifelong friend. 

Here wc have the rare, if not a solitary, example 
of a youth of noble birth, endowed with wealth and 
personal graces, high cultured, with all that tlie 
world can giro at his command, devoting himself 
in the morning of life, with all his havings and all 
his being, to the senice of Christ, to the builduig 
up of the kingdom of Christ on earth. We havo 
precisely the realization of what the young man in 
the Gospel, whom Jesus loved, failed to realize, 
turning away sorrowful, " for he had great pos- 
sessions." The Pietists at Halle, followers of 
Spener, looked with jealous eye on this great sac- 
rifice, not made distinctively on their basis and 
in their service. They questioned its value, dis- 
credited its influence. " Master, we saw one cast- 
ing out devils in thy name ; and we forbade him 
because he followed not us." They insisted tliat 
the Count had not been converted ; he had not 
passed through the regular stages of penitential 
struggle and ecstatic new birth ; ho might bo a 
servant of God, but was not as yet an adopted 
child of God. Zinzendorf, far from resenting this 
allegation, took the matter to heart, and made it 



ESSAYS. 46 

the occasion of rigorous self-examination. The 
result of his reflection was that Halle had no 
right to impose her methods as a universal test 
and condition of godliness ; that one might right- 
fully attain to be a child of Ood independently of 
Halle. 

He soon discovered that in order to labor with 
the best effect in the mission he had chosen, it 
would be necessary for him to enter the ministry. 
Accordingly, after some preparatory study he pre- 
sented himself, under a feigned name, or rather 
one which really belonged to him, but which he 
had not been accustomed to use, as a candidate for 
orders, and obtained the desired license, in virtue 
of which he preached whenever he deemed it expe- 
dient to exercise that function. The step gave 
great offence to the Saxon nobility, as tending to 
abolish social distinctions and threatening the sta- 
bility of their order. A noble in the pulpit was a 
dangerous innovation, a public scandal. In conse- 
quence of which, on some frivolous charge trumped 
up by his enemies, he was sent into banishment, a 
royal rescript requiring him to part with his estates 
and to quit his native Saxony. The sentence was 
afterward rescinded. Meanwhile the harm result- 
ing from it was less than might have been expected. 
He made over his estates to his wife, and thanks 
to her wise administration, suffered no pecuniary 



46 COUNT ZINZENDORF. 

loss. The community at Hermhut waa too well 
organized to need his personal superviBion, while 
the cause of the Moravian Brotherhood could only 
gain from the misBiouary labors he now undertook 
on their behalf. 

I have said that Zinzendorf did not intend sepa- 
ration from the Lutheran Church. He accepted 
without dissent the Augsburg Confession, the creed 
of that Church, and only desired a revival of prac- 
tical religion by means of voluntary associations 
within that Confession. Nevertheless it was found 
desirable — in view, especially, of Moravian colo- 
nies abroad — to have an independent ecclesiastical 
oi^jonization. For this the old Bohemian episco- 
pate, the original constitution of the Unitai Fra- 
(rttm, offered a coDTenient basis. During a visit 
to Berlin the Count was urged by the King of Prus- 
sia, Frederic William I., who was strongly attracted 
to our hero and interested in his doings, to reviye 
that Constitution, and obtain for himself episcopal 
investiture. Daniel Ernst Jablonsky^ the leading 
German divine of that day, seconded the royal 
counsel, and referred the Count for further advice 
to his friend the Archbishop of Canterbury. Zin- 
zendorf went to England and had an interview 
with Canterbury, who advised him by all meaus to 
resume and continue the episcopal succession of 
the old Bohemian Church. Accordingly, having 



■■k 



ESS A YS. 47 

previously submitted himself for examination and 
approval to a conmiittee of the clergy of Berlin, on 
the 20th of May, 1737, Zinzendorf was ordained 
by Jablonsky bishop of the Moravian Church. 
The King immediately addressed a congratulatory 
letter to the new Bishop, Ludovicus, as follows: 

Dearly beloved Lord Count, — It was with satis- 
faction that I learned that, according to your desire, you 
have been consecrated bishop of the Moravian Brethren. 
. . . That this transaction may redound to the glory of 
Almighty Grod and the salvation of many souls, is my 
heart's desire. I am always your very affectionate, 

Frederic Willl^m. 

The Archbishop of Canterbury, in an elegant 
Latin epistle, cordially extended to him the right 
hand of fellowship, acknowledging in him a coepU- 
eopus and ecclesiastical peer. 

Thus royally and prelatically auspicated and au- 
thorized, our Count proceeded to labor with added 
zeal in the service of a Church which, having now 
disengaged itself from the Lutheran (though still 
Lutheran in doctrine), and become a distinct and 
independent communion, might claim, in virtue of 
its Bohemian antecedents, to be the eldest of the 
Protestant Churches. 

His life thenceforth is a history of administra- 
tive work and missionary operations conducted on 
a large scale in many lands. He visited England, 



48 CO UN T ZINZENDORF. 

Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Prussia, Switzerland, 
the Danish West Indies, and in 1741 came to this 
country, having previously, in view of so long an 
absence, at a synod held in London resigned bis 
office of superintendent of the Brotherhood in Ger- 
many, causing it to be transferred to an assembly 
called the General Conference. After landing in 
New York be proceeded to Pennsylvania, where 
he spent the better part of two years, residing 
chiefly in Philadelphia. At a meeting held in the 
house of the Governor of tlie province, — where, 
among others, Benjamin Franklin was present, — 
he stated that be wished, while travelling in this 
country, to drop his title, and to be known only as 
Brother Louie. A large portion of the population 
of the province were Germans. To those in Phila- 
delphia and in Germantown, Zinzendorf preached 
in their native language, and was cordially invited 
to be their pastor. He accepted the office provis- 
ionally, until a permanent preacher from Germany 
could be obtained for their service. He aimed not 
BO much to establish local Moravian churches as to 
kindle spiritnal interest in other conununions and 
to band togetber such as desired to lead a dis- 
tinctively religious life. Some, however, he did 
establish. The Moravian Brotherhood in Bethle- 
hem, Penn., rernams to this day a witness of 
Zinzendorf 8 American mission. 



I 



■■■■■MMIBaHIk 



ESS A YS. 49 

In 1742 his romantic genius impelled him to 
undertake, in company with his fellow-laborers 
Bohler, Conrad, and Anna Nitschmann, who after- 
ward became his second wife, a missionary tour 
among the Indians, chiefly Iroquois and Delawares. 
We have entries in his Journal which give us his 
impressions of savage life. Some of these Indians 
had been abeady converted. Concerning these he 
exclaims : ^^ Oh, how ashamed we feel in the pres- 
ence of these brethren, who must help themselves 
in the Saviour's work with a language which is 
hardly better than the cackling of geese, while we, 
possessed of a language like that of the gods, can 
hardly express our hearts' emotions!" Any lan- 
guage which conveys no meaning to the hearer will 
be apt to have an irrational sound. The Count was 
not aware that his own godlike Oerman was com- 
pared by the Emperor Julian to the cawing of 
crows. The faces of the Indians, he says, wear 
a dull, unhappy expression. " They have only one 
pleasant look, that is when they contemplate the 
wounds of the Lamb. . . . They are the most deter- 
mined enemies of labor; tliey will sooner suiGfer 
the most pinching want than engage in any work. 
If an Indian puts his hand to anything, it is either 
because he has become a child of Ood or because 
from association with the whites he has acquired the 
spirit of covetousness, which is the root of all evil." 

4 



50 COUNT zmZENDORF. 

Ho met in tliin tour a Frenchwoman, Mad^^ 
de Montoux, widow of an Indian chief who had 
been killed in battle. " On seeing ua she wept 
bitterly. I spoke of our affairs, and remarked that 
we had named our town Bethlehem. ' That,' she 
exclaimed, 'is the name of the town m France 
where Jesus and the Holy Family lived.' I in- 
ferred from this that what is reported of French 
missionaries is true. They teach that Cbrist was 
a Fi-encliman, and that the English were his 
crucifiers." 

His stay in America was cat short by tidings of 
what he regarded as a misdirection on the jjart of 
the Brethren at home. The authorities intrusted 
with the management of the churches in Germany 
had adopted measures which tended to give the 
Brotherhood a more sectarian and separatistic po- 
sition than accorded with his views. He was La- 
theran before he was Moravian, and more Lutheran 
than Moravian still. Although for convenience of 
ecclesiastical functions be had accepted the office 
of bishop, it was not bis design to cut loose from 
bis native communion. In its civil relations the 
Brotherhood was still to be reckoned a branch of 
tlie Lutheran Church. But in his absence the 
Conference bad taken steps which traversed this 
intent. He had resigned bis authority so far as 
file Church in Germany was concerned, and bad 



■■ 



ESSAYS. 61 

no longer any right to act as their bishop ; but he 
now, without consent of any Council, resumed his 
episcopal function, and with autocratic inhibition 
reversed so far as possible the action taken in his 
absence. It is a proof of the astounding overweight 
of Zinzendorf s personality and of the deep respect 
with which he was regarded by the Brethren, as 
well as their humble and peaceable temper, that 
such dictation was submitted to on their part with- 
out remonstrance. With all his piety and genuine 
devotion to the cause, he could not forget that he 
was a count, a feudal noble. As such he seems 
to have expected the same submission in things 
spiritual which people of his class were accustomed 
to exact in things temporal. Theoretically meek, 
as became a disciple of Christ, condescendingly 
gracious to his inferiors, professing himself their 
servant for Christ's sake, he nevertheless preferred 
to serve by ruling. And he ruled in the main, it 
must be confessed, with consummate ability. The 
genius of leadership he certainly possessed, — the 
power to inspire in Iiis followers unlimited confi- 
dence in his judgment. There had been in his ab- 
sence an outburst of fanaticism among the Brethren 
in Germany, which assumed an antinomian charac- 
ter and threatened to make the name Moravian a 
synonym for lawless indulgence. This danger he 
averted by the timely interposition of his authority, 



52 COUNT ZINZENBORF. 

exposing the error in which it originated, remind- 
ing the Brethren of the high moral standard of 
former years, and teaching them that the freedom 
in Christ which they hoasted was not to bo under- 
stood as emancipation from the moral law, but as 
free obedience. 

Zinzendorf did not recross the Atlantic, but 
while an esile from his paternal estates led an 
itinerant life, visiting various countries in the ser- 
vice of the cause he had espoused. He spent four 
years in England for the more convenient super- 
vision of the churclies there establiahed, and be- 
cause England was the natural entrepSt between 
the mother-church in Germany and her missionary 
stations in heathen lands. Here, in England, a new 
trial befell the Brotherhood, — a pressing finan- 
cial embarrassment, due to the want of worldly 
prudence on the part of the Count himself. He had 
authorized, through his deacons, liberal expendi- 
tures for missionary and congregational purposes, 
without su9iciently calculating the means at their 
command. The deacons, unknown to him, had 
supplemented their means by borrowing. A heavy 
debt had been incurred. This could not last ; 
credit failed. There came a crisis, hearing of 
which the Count, though not legally liable, stood in 
the gap. He assumed the debt, which he pledged 
himself to liquidate by instalments. The majority 



mmmamtmmmmmk 



ESSAYS. 58 

of the creditors accepted the terms ; but some, who 
were bitterly anti-Moravian, insisted on immediate 
payment, and were minded to send the Count to 
jail for debt. To prevent this step, which would 
have been ruin to the Brotherhood in England, the 
other creditors, friends, and well-wishers of the 
cause came forward and satisfied the claims of its 
enemies. 

In addition to his other labors, arduous and un< 
ceasing, imposed upon him by the daily care of the 
churches, Zinzendorf was an indefatigable writer. 
As many as a hundred volumes, still extant in dif- 
ferent collections, are ascribed to him. They have 
never been published in a uniform edition, and — 
dealing, as they mostly do, with local and epheme- 
ral topics — would have no interest now, except as 
characteristic of the writer. 

He composed, it is said, five hundred or more 
hymns for the use of the Church. Many of these 
are still preserved in Moravian collections. Some 
of them were eliminated on account of the offensive 
imagery employed in treating the mutual love of 
Christ and his Church as a sexual relation. Others 
were rejected as trivial and beneath the dignity of 
the man and the cause. In the conduct of public 
worship he sometimes ventured to improvise 
hymns, which he gave out, verse by verse, to be 
sung by the congregation after the manner of the 



54 COUNT ZINZENDOHF. 

80-called deaconing of the hymn in Puritan New 
England. It sometimes happened that when a 
Terse had been given out and suug, an appropriate 
rhyming word for the next waa not forthcoming. 
In that case lie supplied the defect by a meaning- 
less sound, which met the vocal exigency if it did 
not satisfy the intellectual requirements of tliat 
part of the aervice. The devout congregation knew 
that though the Count might not always succeed 
with his rhymes, he always meant well ; and so 
they obeyed the direction of the Chorus in " Henry 
V." : — 

'•Still be kind, 
And eke out oar performance with your mindl " 

HiB preaching is said to have been marvellously 
effective, especially in pathetic appeals. Fr«m a 
slight acquaintance, I should aay it was often ex- 
travagant, and somewhat coarse. Here is an extract 
from a homily on his favorite topic, the wounds of 
Christ : — 

"There is no more formidable law — the law of 
Moses and Moses himself was a mere poltroon com- 
pared with it — no law more formidable than the thun- 
der-word of the Gospel, the soul-piercing sword of the 
woands of Jeaus, Well did the women of Jerusalem 
know it. O word of wounds I thon thunder-word, 
thou soul-transfixing sword t To tiunk that Jesus was 
pierced and bored and mangled for all that we behold, 



■■■MBMMh 



ESS A YS. 66 

for the groand-stuff of time and humanity, for all the 
horrors that pass before our eyes, and for those that do 
not pass before our eyes, but within our knowledge, 
and that fill this earth-ball and desecrate and defile it I 
And for us, with our wretched hearts, for us who are so 
vile, whom he has to drag and carry, and must look 
through an astonishing magnifying-glass in order to see 
any reality in us ! He has to make his own heart, his 
bridegroom's heart, a microscope, that beneath it our 
little mite of gratitude, our sun-mote of love, may seem 
to be all, so that he shall see nothing and care for 
nothing but that." 

The last years of Zinzendorf s life were spent on 
his own estates and in the neighborhood of Herrn- 
hut, the edict of banishment having been revoked. 
There, toiling faithfully to the end in the service 
of the Brotherhood, he died in May, 1760, in the 
sixtieth year of his age. His obsequies were cele- 
brated with the pomp befitting the grandeur and 
priceless blessing of such a life. A procession of 
twenty-one hundred mourners, consisting of kin- 
dred, friends, admirers, the principal dignitaries of 
the Church from far and near, escorted by a mili- 
tary company of Imperial grenadiers, and witnessed 
by two thousand spectators, accompanied his re- 
mains to their grave in the beautiful cemetery at 
Hermhut, where they still repose beneath the 
marble slab which records his name. It was noted 



56 COUNT ZINZENDORF. 

as a happy coincidence that the scriptural watch- 
word tor the day was the text : " He shall coma 
with rejoicing, bearing his eheares witli him." 

Herder, in the '• Adraataea," says of liim, " He 
left the world as a conqueror, like whom there have 
been few ia the world's history, and none in Lis 
own century." A conqueror, indeed, whose con- 
quests, attested by Moravian exploits, have dotted 
the globe with oases of holiness ; missionary con- 
quests extending in literal verity from " Green- 
land's icy mountains " to "India's coral strand," 
from tlie Cape of Good Hope to the shores of the 
White Sea, from Tranquebar to Surinam, from St. 
Thomas to Labrador, and gladdening our own land, 
in Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, with 
its gardens of peace. Methodism, the strong and 
many-membercd body of the Methodists, may be 
reckoned one of his conquests. For did not John 
Wesley kindle his far-flaming torch at the altar of 
Herrnhut, making the long journey to Lnsatia to 
verify with his own eyes the report which had come 
to him of the Brotherhood, and writing to them 
afterward, " We are endeavoring here also, accord- 
ing to the grace that is given us, to be followers of 
you, as you are of Christ " ? 

Zinzendorf was twice married, — first to Countess 
Erdmuth of Ebersdorf, a lady of hie own rank ; and 
after her death to Anna Nitschmann, who, in her 



ESS A YS. 67 

character of deaconess to the Moravian sisterhood, 
had already proved an efficient helpmate. Three 
children were born to him from his first wife, — two 
daughters, and a son of great promise who died in 
early life. 

As to person, the Count's commanding figure 
drew the admiring gaze of passers-by as he walked 
the streets of London. His face in picture wears 
a look of imperturbable calm, with a hint of self* 
satisfaction in the eyes. 

A conqueror, but no seer, no revealer, like 
Swedenborg, of original truth. Never did a spirit 
so intense inhabit intellectually so narrow a world. 
The sinfulness of man, and the wounds of Christ, 
were the two foci of the little orbit in which his 
being revolved. All beyond that was barren and 
void. The majestic volume of the Universe with 
its sacred scriptures, older than Hebrew or Greek, 
was unrolled to him in vain. Unknown to him the 
" sense sublime of something far more deeply inter- 
fused " than any lore of Palestine. Not through 
Nature, I think, not consciously through Nature, did 
God speak to him, but only through Christ. And 
the Christ whom he worshipped was not the divine 
teacher, not the high model of a heavenly life, but 
only the sufferer, the victim, — 

'* The Master's marred and wounded mien, 
His hands, his feet, his side.'' 



58 COUNT ZINZENDORF. 

And yot, with astonishing self-ignorance, this man 
could say, " I am not one of those wlio are satisfied 
with feeling; I belong to the class of thinkers." 
He entertained the pleasant conceit of a private 
correspondence ■with tlie Saviour, who brought him 
temporal aid as well as spiritual bleaaiug. Once at 
sea, off the Scilly Islands, a violent tempest thi-eat- 
ened to drive the vessel on the rocks. Shipwreck 
seemed imminent. Tiie captain in despair had 
resigned himself to his fat« ; but the Count assured 
him that within two hours the tempest would abate, 
which it actually did. The vessel was saved. 
" How could you know," asked the captaiu, " that 
file stona would pass ao soon?" "The Saviour 
told me," ffaa the reply. 

The Moravians have a custom, much insisted on 
by Zinzendorf, known as the " watchword." Texts 
are selected from the Bible and assigned in ad- 
vance, at a ventnre, one for each day in tiie year. 
Out of three hundred and eizty-five days it would 
not be strange if occasionally the events of some 
particular day should fit the text set down for it. 
ThoB, on the day when the Count met his followers 
in Bethlehem, Penn., to inaugurate the church in 
that place, the watchword for the day was found to 
be, " Thia is the day which the Lord hath made : 
let us rejoice and be glad therein." Such coinci- 
dences were believed to be divinely predetermined. 



tfMMMMMIk 



ESSAYS. 69 

Another custom is the use of the lot to decide dif- 
ficult questions, — such as the choice of a chief elder 
out of two or three esteemed equally competent, the 
adoption or non-^option of some doubtful policy or 
proposed undertaking. I suppose many of us hare 
had recourse to lot in some perplexing alternative. 
The doing so is a practical confession of the inabil- 
ity of the will to act without a preponderating 
motive. We refer the matter, as it were, to a 
foreign agent, which some call ^^ chance," and others 
accept as the oracle of Ood. The Moravians, like 
the first disciples, use it always in the latter sense. 
But when we consider that the position of the slip 
on which the choice is inscribed, and the direction 
of the fingers which select it, if the act is honest, 
are determined by natural laws and depend on the 
action of forces, present and past, reaching back 
through all time, so that the drawing of that slip is 
a necessary result of the original constitution of 
things; when we think that the world in all its 
parts, through all its periods, must have been other 
than it was and is, had not that slip, but anotlier, 
been drawn, — when we consider this, the supposi- 
tion of a special Providence willing that result is a 
heavy strain on one's faith. But faith is always 
beautiful, and criticism is cheap. 

I have said that the Moravians are the oldest 
Protestant Church. I will add that, above all 



60 COUNT ZINZENDORF. 

others, tliey moat resemble the Church of the Erst 
disciples. More than anj otlier, they have repro- 
duced the original unity, the pristine brotherhood, 
of the followers of Christ. "No brotherhood, no 
Christianity," was Zinzcndorfs motto. Ho did not 
care to found a sect ; his aim was to gather into 
one, from all the churches, souls attracted to each 
other by common faith ui the saving efficacy of the 
blood of Christ, and conscious of salvation through 
that faith. He regretted the tendency to separat- 
ism in the Brotherhood ; but separatism was a 
necessary result of the hostility toward them of 
other communioae. 

As a separate fold they still survive and still 
retain the stamp of Hernihut in their discipline 
and way of life. Undogmatic, with no enforced 
creed, no test of fellowship but their common faith 
in atonement by the blood of Christ, — secure in 
that, they cultivate a religion of trust, leas passion- 
ate than Methodism, less formal than Quakerism, 
leas Bulphurous and grim than Calvinism. Heaven, 
not hell, is the staple of their preaching ; love, not 
fear, the soul of their religion. The rant of the 
conventicle is not heard in their borders. They 
rejoice in skilled music and love-feasts ; and if, on 
the one hand, they traverse nature by rigid separa- 
tion of the sexes, they overcome, on the other hand, 
the weakness of nature by vanquishii^ the fear of 



ESS A YS. 61 

death, treating it as a joyful return, a Eeimgang^ 
celebrated with triumphal music from the church 
tower, and symbolized by the beauty of their burial- 
places, which they denominate " Courts of Peace." 

A religion of peace. Some of the finest spirits 
of Germany are among its witnesses. Schleier- 
macher and Novalis were reared in its fold. 
Goethe, in the " Confessions of a Beautiful Soul," 
reflects its sweetness. Prince Bismarck, thanks 
to his Moravian wife, has been touched with its 
influence. 

They survive, but they do not increase. The 
number of Moravians in Europe and the United 
States is estimated at twenty thousand souls. But 
mark, as proof of the expansive force, the spiritual 
reach, of Moravian Christianity, that this compara- 
tively small body maintains, scattered among all the 
remote comers of the earth, eighty-two missionary 
stations, in which collectively the number of na- 
tive converts amounts to more than seventy-seven 
thousand. 

Their success with savage nations surpasses all 
other missionary triumphs. Whom none could in- 
fluence, they have persuaded; whom none could 
enlighten, they have made to see. The Hottentot 
of the Cape, in answer to their patient appeal, cast 
aside the beast that he was, came forth a man, and 
entered the kingdom prepared for him too from 



62 COUNT ZmZENDORF. 

the foandation of the world. The ice-bound GreeO' 
lander opened his tardy bosom to their solicitfttion 
as the arctic flora, starting from its loug sleep, 
opens at last to the July suu. 

Moravian communities have ceased to multiply. 
That tidal-wave of spiritual life which swept over 
Christendom during the first half of the eighteenth 
century has left its traces in churches that still 
survive and that mark the height of the swelling 
flood ; but the flood ebhed, and no longer suffices 
tor new creations. Nor is there, perhaps, any need 
of such. The principle of segregation, of local 
seclusion, which gave birth to the old FratcmitieB, 
as in medieval time it had given birth to counUess 
monastic institutions, has done its work. It is not 
ueedfid, it is not well, that tlie spiritually minded 
should dwell by themselves in separate folds. Bet- 
ter tbey should be dispersed, should mix with the 
world, and act as a leavening principle in secular 
life. The secular life must absorb the spiritual, 
must be permeated by it, transformed by it ; else 
would the spiritual have no business in earthly 
places, and the human world would miss the true 
pui-pose of its being, dishonoring Him who willed 
it to be. The world is not doomed to be a godless 
world ; it is to be the abode of redeemed and per- 
fected man, the realization of all the ideals. Relig- 
ion is one of those ideals, but not the only one, tlie 



ESS A YS. 



63 



chief, but not the only agency in transforming the 
world. There is a greater word than even religion, 
a word of farther reach, of more momentous import, 
including religion with how much else ! That word 
is Humanity. 



d 



CHRISTTANITT IN" CONFLICT WITH 
HELLENISM. 

[From ihe Unilarian fiewew,] 

THE saddest passage of the world's annals, and 
also the grandest, according as we fix our 
regards on its losses and decays, or on the new 
creations wliich it witnessed, is the period embraced 
in the first four centuries of the Christian era. 
The lover of classic antiquity — Christian though 
be be in heart and creed — contemplates with a 
sigh ' the downfall of ancient temples and the ruin 
of rites and beliefs involved in the death of Hellen- 
ism. On the other hand, the most fervent admirer 
of those vanished splendors, " the fair humanities 
of old religion," contrasting, on its social side, 
what perished with what replaced it in the order of 
time, must confess that the world was well rid of 
polytheistic uses, and humanity abundantly com- 
pensated for all esthetic and poetic losses by 
the spiritual life which streamed from the new 



> The algh which braftUiet 10 patbelicallj from Sctiiller'i "Oodi 
rf Greece." 



ESS A YS. 65 

The histories which treat of this period have 
been written, for the most part, from an ecclesias- 
tical point of view, and inspired by dogmatic or 
pragmatical interests. That of Gibbon, written in 
a spirit of historic indifference, with no apologetic 
or polemic bias, will always maintain its place, and, 
so far as it covers the ground, approve itself as a 
faithful report of the facts of the time. But in 
Gibbon also I miss the faculty of historic divina- 
tion, the sense which discerns the deeper meaning 
of the facts recorded, which interprets liistoric 
results in the light of their bearing on the whole of 
human destiny. "We have no history of the origins 
of the Christian Church from a humanitarian or, 
if I may use so pedantic a phrase, from an anthro- 
pocosmic point of view ; no history inspired by the 
questions, What is humanity's debt to the Church ; 
what is Christianity's place in the education of 
humankind? The time and the man for such a 
history have not yet arrived. Meanwhile, the his- 
tories we have will be found most instructive when 
studied in that sense. 

The Christian Church and the Roman Empire 
were contemporary, or nearly contemporary, births. 
The latter came armed from the throes of a naval 
conflict on the waters of the Ambracian Gulf ; the 
former sprang to life, a babbling babe, in a garret 

5 



66 CBRISriANlTY AND HELLENIST. 

of an inland city shut in by inhospitable hills. 
What shall be the fortunes respectively of these 
uew-comers on the stage of history ? The one is 
backed and omened by a pedigree of heroes and 
seven centuries of victory ; the otlier, by the hum- 
ble if saintly life and tragic, death of one who had 
recently perished as a malefactor. To balance 
this inequality, the latter is inspired by a faith in 
its own future, immeasurable, indomitable ; the 
other derives its sole gaarantee from favoring 
circumstance. 

Could not the two unite in one dominion ? There 
was a moment when such a coalition seemed possi- 
ble. The Emperor Tiberius is said to have pro- 
posed to the Roman Senate the admission of Christ 
to a place in the Pantheon, and his consequent 
solemn recognition as one of the gods of the State. 
It is a curious question what would have been the 
effect of such recognition had that proposition been 
accepted, had Christianity enjoyed at the start the 
sanction of imperial power. Its spread might have 
been more rapid, but the strength that was in it, its 
latent moral force, would never have asserted itself. 
It needed the hardening by fire to which the wan- 
tonness of Imperial cruelty subjected it in its in- 
fancy, in order to become the world-subduing power 
it was destined to be. It could not accept as a gift 
what it felt itself entitled to by divine right. It 



WWb 



ESSAYS. 67 

could not " borrow leave to be," but must conquer 
for itself — not with sword, like armed Islam in a 
later age, but by miracles of patience, by suffering 
and dying — an unprecarious throne. Constitution- 
ally exclusive, it must put all things under it. It 
must reign supreme, it must reign alone. 

Such a consummation seemed, from a worldly 
point of view, an impossibility; for though the 
dominant religion was inwardly dead, though poly- 
theism as a faith, as personal conviction, had lost 
its hold of educated minds, it was still politically 
seized of the Roman State, and not to be evicted 
but with mortal agony and throes that upheaved 
the world. Theodor Keim ^ calls attention to the 
fact that the Roman religion, unlike all others, 
originated, not with priest or prophet, but with the 
secular power. It was therefore from the first 
indissolubly linked with the State. Conceive, then, 
a government powerful as none ever was before or 
since in all the elements of civil strength, and jeal- 
ous as it was powerful, impatient of opposition, 
prompt to crush whatever opposed ; a government 
whose sleepless vigilance and omnipresent police 
not a thing that occurred in any corner of its wide 
dominion could escape ; a government whose head 
was also the head of the national religion, himself 
an object of worship, to refuse which worship was 
^ In his Bom and Chmtenthum. 



68 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 

treaaon to the State, — to such a government comes 
this vagabond from the East, from a land uaiver- 
s&Wy despised, and seeks to establish itself in the 
capital of the Empire. Ignominiously repulsed, it 
continues to advance ; smitten and cast out, it 
steadily prevails ; aod having entered as an outlaw, 
ends as sovereign of the world. Its triumph is the 
supreme miracle of history. 

The fierce rebuff which Christianity encountered, 
at the point where it first emerges info secular hi»- 
tory, revealed, on the part of the Christians, a power 
of endurance which should have taught the secular 
authorities that the " pestilent" novelty was not to 
be disposed of in that fashion. Meanwhile, by the 
light of those cruel fires in the gardens of Nero, 
the "disciples" might see how wide was the chasm 
which then divided their Church from the State. 
Three centuries were required to bridge that gulf ; 
and this the Church accomplished by casting into 
it the children of her bosom, over whose mangled 
bodies humanity made the dire passage from the 
old world to the new. 

An inscription at the entrance of the Catacombs 
of St. Sebastian in Rome tells of one hundred and 
seventy-four thousand martyrs who there repose in 
peace. It is not necessary to suppose that all these 
were the immediate victims of civil persecution. 
But, in any view, this record of a single city sag- 



I 



Mk 



ESS A YS. 69 

gests an estimate very different from that which 
Gibbon would have us accept as the number of 
those who suffered martyrdom throughout the vast 
extent of the Empire.^ The precise number does 
not concern us, nor even the approximate number ; 
enough that torture and death were the frequent 
penalty of the Christian confession in those centu- 
ries, — torture and death the most excruciating 
that human ingenuity could devise, — and that these 
were voluntarily incurred and unflinchingly borne 
by the victims. It was not their belief that the 
government quarrelled with, it was not their doc- 
trine that was punished, but their insubordination 
in refusing to sacrifice. In the view of the govern- 
ment the Christians were a political party, insur- 
gents against the State, whose head they refused to 
honor in the way prescribed. It was not a question 
of opinion, but one of obedience. Will you or will 
you not sacrifice to the Emperor ? Will you " swear 
by the genius," that is, acknowledge the divinity, of 
Caesar ? To the government official it was simply 
a token of submission to rightful authority ; but to 
the Christian it meant something else, — it meant 
that CsBsar was before Christ, that Caesar was God. 
With that understanding, young and old, delicate 
women, nursing mothers, suffered their flesh to be 

* ** Somewhat less than two thousand persons." See Mil- 
man*8 Gibbon, i. 599. 



70 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 

torn with red-hot pincers, and would not commit 
the saving act. 

Martyrdom is no proof of the truth of a religion, 
that is, of the truth of the opinions held by its 
votaries. Quite opposite opinions have had their 
martyrs. What it does prove, when it readies the 
scope and strain of the Christian martyrologies, ia 
— Spirit, — the action of a spirit wliicli transceitda 
the ordinary limits and capabilities of human na- 
ture, takes captive the will, aiid makes it at once 
an invincible bar and an all-conquering force. 
The political success of Christianity was the work 
of that spirit. The secondary causes by which 
Gibbon attempts to explain that success are well 
put ; but Gibbon does not perceive that those 
causes themselves require to be explained. Com- 
pact organization. What compacted it ? Austere 
morals, intolerant zeal, belief in immortality. Yes ; 
but whence derived, the morals, the zeal, the be- 
lief ? How came they at that particular crisis to 
develop such exceptional potency ? They point to 
another factor, — inspiration. It is the fashion of 
the current philosophy to derive new births from 
old antecedents by way of evolution. But there 
are births which this philosophy does not explain. 
Christianity had no such genesis. It cannot be 
said, in any proper sense, to be an evolution of 
.Judaism, any more than Islam was an evolution of 



1 



ESS A 7S. 71 

Christianify. Judaism was its matrix, but not its 
sire. If in any sense "evolved" from given 
antecedents, it was as the whirlwind is evolved 
from atmospheric heat. This great world-force, 
which came with " a sound as of a rushing, 
mighty wind" and went cycloning through the 
lands, was surely no product of Mosaic tradition, 
but the immediate offspring of a Spirit which con- 
ducts the education of the human race and from 
time to time interpolates the course of events with 
new motives adjusted to a pre-ordained ascending 
scale* of spiritual life. I say " interpolates," for is 
not all inspiration interpolation, — a lift that breaks 
the dead, mechanical sequence of things ? 

It is not to be supposed that all who joined the 
Christian confession partook of this spirit. Many 
were drawn to it by quite earthly motives, — by 
the hope of a social revolution, the coming of a 
new kingdom in which, having nothing to lose, 
they might reasonably hope to gain ; by the charm 
of equality ; by the communism which secured them 
against want, as we learn from Lucian, — an un- 
intentional witness of the charity of the early 
Church. And there were lapses in times of per- 
secution. The Church could afford them; the 
Church could afford to take back the lapsed when 
persecution ceased. It was not the aim of the 
Spirit to have a faultless Church, a Churcb com- 



72 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 

posed entirely of the *' Satliaroi." A mixture of 
tares with the wheat was not fatal to the Church, 
did not prevent its being a true Church, as Cyprian, 
earliest exponent of the Catholic idea, maintained, 
in opposition to Novatian purists. 

Nor did the Spirit care to have a constituency 
of such as are called in worldly phrase " respect- 
able " people. Socially and intellectually they 
seem to have been, with few exceptions, a low 
class, — " not many wise after the flesh, not many 
mighty, not many noble." Paul, the high-hearted 
Roman citizen, who bravely cast in his lot with 
these people, could see with prophetic vision how 
God was going to put to shame the wise and the 
strong by means of the weak and foolish and the 
low. But how would it strike an outsider ? Is it 
surprising that men of culture and good position, 
men like Tacitus and Suetonius, should have looked 
with contempt on the Christian Church when they 
aaw what sort of people it drew to its communion, 
— restless spirits ; malecontents ; radicals of every 
stripe ; occasionally slaves, as we infer from the 
allusion to " those of Creaar's household ; " now and 
then an adventurer like Peregrinus Proteus ? Not 
the kind of people that a self-respecting citizen 
would care to consort with. And I suppose that 
few of ns, had we lived in those days, and had not 
caught, or been cau^t by, the Spirit, would have 



ESS A YS. 78 

cared to be found in such company. And when 
I see Christian zealots, proud of their orthodoxy, 
with conscious holiness looking down upon heretics 
and flouting new departures in theology, I amuse 
myself with thinking how heartily, had they been 
contemporaries of Paul, these respectables would 
have spumed the writers of the New Testament 
and all that guild. 

In the second century Christianity assumed a 
new phase. It had developed an intellectual life. 
It had its men of letters, its learned essayists, its 
eloquent apologists. It had also developed heresies 
and schisms. Rival systems had sprung up. Gnos- 
ticism asserted its claims, assuming to teach a pro- 
founder doctrine than the Gospel. The Church 
was called to contend with intellectual adversaries 
as well as civil authority. The latter half of this 
century witnessed the culmination and incipient 
decline of the Upper Empire. Marcus Aurelius, 
standing midway between the first appearance of 
Christianity and its civil enfranchisement, repre- 
sents the high-water mark of Roman greatness, 
as he does the height of Imperial virtue in the 
annals of mankind. Allen, in his valuable mono- 
graph, " The Mind of Paganism," says : " "We may 
have to come down as far as Louis IX. of France 
to find his parallel." But neither in Saint Louis 
nor in English Alfred, to whom Merivale compares 



74 CBRISTUNITY AND HELLENISM. 

him, do I fiud the serene pietj, the mortil sublimity, 
which I admire in the Koman sovereign. The 
piety of Louis waa reiuforeed by the Btiinulus of 
Christian memories, of a. Christian ideal, in an 
age of unquestioning faith. Marcus had no such 
support. He dwelt amid decaying altars; he flour- 
ished in a dying world. 1 contrast in the two the 
lunar virtue with the solar. He is accused of weak- 
ness in his lenient treatment of Faustina. The 
justice of the charge depends on the truth of the 
alleged infidelity of Faustina, which is somewhat 
doubtful. He is blamod for bequeathing the Em- 
pire to Commodus ; but the choice of the natural 
heir, who might outgrow his youthful follies, seemed 
less dangerous than the inevitable conflict between 
rival claimants of the throne. 

The character of the man is revealed in his self- 
communings, which have come down to us, an im- 
perishable volume, the so-called "Meditations of 
the Emperor Antoninus." Better preaching I have 
not found, nor thoughts more edifying, in anj 
Christian writer of that time. A sombre spirit, 
but how sweet, how grand! No soul was ever 
more impressed with the vanity of earthly things. 
As from under the shadow of impending doom, 
he urges upon himself the pursuit of the one thing 
needful. " What is inomortal fame 1 Vanity and 
ftn empty sound. What is there, then, to which 



I M— ^it^MaaaaM 



ESS A YS. 76 

xre may reasonably apply ourselves? This one 
thing alone, — that our thoughts and intentions be 
just, our actions directed to the public good, our 
words inspired by truth, oar whole disposition acqui- 
escence in whatsoever may happen, as flowing from 
such a Fountain, the original of all things." 

That Marcus authorized the persecution of the 
Christians, is justly reckoned, from the Christian 
point of view, a blot on his fame. One could wish, 
indeed, that he had understood Christianity, that 
he had been in a position to- judge it fairly. All 
he knew of it was that the Christians, in the 
Roman sense, were atheists, — they neglected sac- 
rifice, they denied the gods. His father, Antoninus 
Pins, had checked the persecution in Asia, had even 
written to the authorities at Ephesus to punish 
the informers, and to let the accused, though Chris- 
tians, go free. But the son had fallen on other 
times. A season of national prosperity, unbroken 
since the reign of Nerva, had come to a close. 
There was trouble on the German frontiers; the 
legions had been routed on the Danube, the Mar- 
comanni were pouring down from the Carpa- 
thians. Worst of all, at home a raging pestilence, 
imported from the East, was decimating the people. 
An inundation which destroyed the public granaries 
had brought famine and desolation on the land. 
The horizon was dark all round ; the public mind 



^f^ 



76 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 

was agitated with strange fears* In tiiia Bgony 
the religious sentiment, long dormant, was sod* 
denly aroused. It was no longer social antipathT, 
but returning piety, that demanded the externum 
nation of the Christians. For were not they tibe 
true cause of all this misery ? They lure atheistp, 
they have denied the gods; and the gods in their 
wrath have sent these woes. The only way to 
appease the gods and bring back the averted eye 
of their blessing, is utterly to destroy the Ohris^ 

• 

tians. How far the Emperor shared these views, 
it is impossible to say ; enougih he yielded to the 
popular cry: persecution was renewed, and the 
Church grew strong and stronger thereby. 

In the third century the elemental forces are the 
same, but their relative position and prospects have 
changed. The new religion has gained immensely 
in extent and repute. It no longer hides itself in 
the bowels of the earth, but moves freely in the 
face of day. It had grown to be a recognized and 
powerful member, or rather rival, of the State ; no 
longer a doubtful adventure, but an accomplished 
fact. In every province, in every city of note, 
churches were established, — compact bodies bound 
together by laws of their own and a common aim. 
They constituted a state by themselves, an impe- 
rium in imperioy a vast confederation extending 
from the Pyrenees to the Caucasus. Men of all 



ESS A YS. 77 

conditions had embraced the confession. There 
were Christians in the army, in the senate, and 
around the throne. Their doctrine could no longer 
be ignored ; it challenged the attention of Gentile 
scholars, and could match an Arrian and a Celsus 
with a Clement, a Tertullian, and an Origen. 

But Hellenism also presented a new front. It 
had grown devout; it had "got religion." The 
religious enthusiasm of the Christians had exerted 
an influence beyond their ranks. The public mind 
had sobered as the State declined. A moribimd 
world in its sick dotage craved supports which cus- 
tom could not furnish, satisfactions which sense 
could not supply. Sated with the gorgeous specta- 
cles of the circus, on which the treasures of an 
empire had been lavished, and the world ransacked 
to furnish some new prodigy, surfeited with earthly 
splendor, the heart sickened with intolerable weari- 
ness of life. From this disease there were only 
two ways of escape. With the more refined, the 
selfish and despairing, suicide became the fashion 
and passion of the time ; parties of pleasure were 
formed to witness, perhaps to unite in, voluntary 
death. On the other hand, those who still clung to 
life and hope sought in religion a refuge from the 
loathing and disgust of their lot. The religion 
which thus competed with the Christian was not a 
revival of the old cult; it was not the religion 



78 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 

which instituted the Salian priesthood and the rites 
of Mars Gradiviis. That was outgrown and irre- 
coverable. Hithraiam, with its faBcinations, its 
mysteries, and its horrors, had succeeded to tlie 
vacant place. This and Neo-PIatonic mysticism 
might soothe the spiritual hunger they could not 
satisfy. They might resist the attraction of the 
Gospel, they might even infect the strain of Chris- 
tian doctrine ; but they possessed no binding force, 
tliey were powerless against the organic solidarity 
of the Church. 

With the advent of another century the strength 
of that organism was to be arrayed in a final con- 
flict with the State. In the winter of SOS, in the 
imperial palace of Nicomedia, the question was 
debated between the Emperor Diocletian and his 
associate Ctesar, What shall be done with Chris- 
tianity t The vacillating policy of former years, 
now rigorous, now lax, was no longer practicable. 
It mnst be settled once for all which is the stronger, 
Rome, or Christianity. And so the bolt was 
launched. The anniversary of the god Terminus 
was to be the beginning of the end to the Chi-istians, 
— demolition of the Christian churches, ejection of 
Christians from civil and military office, suppression 
on pain of death of Christian worship, ending with 
authority of the local magistrates to ferret out, to 
torture, and pat to death refractory believers. 



rtM 



ESSA YS. 79 

We have no means of knowing how extensively 
and how exactly in all parts of the Empire during 
the eight years of its operation this edict was 
obeyed. Its execution must have depended some- 
what on the local authorities, whose sympathy 
would sometimes be with the Christians. Mean* 
while Diocletian had set the first example on 
record of an Emperor voluntarily divesting himself 
of the purple, — an example followed a thousand 
years later by his Western successor of the allied 
houses of Hapsburg and Castile, on occasion of 
another great revolution in religion. In distant 
Dalmatia, in that famed palace which covered ten 
acres with its courts and its peristyles, as tidings 
reached him of the troubled East and Christianity 
still unsubdued, he had leisure to reflect on the 
impotence of Imperial edicts to quench the light of 
the world. 

Galerius, now sole in command, urged on the 
war, resolved to prosecute it to the bitter end. 
The end came soon to the baffled sovereign writh- 
ing in the agonies of a loatlisome and incurable 
disease, — confession of defeat, acknowledged im- 
potence, revocation of the hostile edict, and a pite- 
ous cry for aid from the Christian God, since 
other gods had proved powerless and other aid 
ima vailing. 

The contest is ended; Christianity has passed 



80 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 

the supreme test. A new principle of social life 
is thenceforth and forever established in the world. 
To the Church a new era has come. The heroic 
age, the martyr age, has passed ; an age of dog- 
matism, of definitions, of hair-splitting controver- 
sies, under secular rule, succeeds. The Church has 
now won Ctesar to her cause, and rejoices in im- 
perial patronage. But what she gains by court 
favor, in the way of temporal prosperity, she loses 
in spiritual freedom. Her princely benefactor 
proves unwittingly her worst enemy. This from 
a moral point of view. But the moral view does 
not always coincide with the providential order. 
It was necessary in the counsels of the Spirit that 
Christendom should have possession of the throne, 
and the Spirit can bear with temporary evil, and 
profit by it in the compassing of its ends. 

Wliat shall we say of Constautine, the first of 
the so-called Christ!^ Emperors? As a man of 
action, in war and peace, he emphatically merits 
the epithet Great which attaches to his name. 
Superbly endowed in body and mind, able alike 
as captain and as statesman, fitted by nature to be 
a ruler of men, successful in conflict with potent 
rivals, concentrating and consolidating under one 
bead the vast extent of the Roman Empire, founder 
of a city which for four centuries was the capital 
of Christendom, and has been for four centuries 



^«afg,_^g^|g,^^^^^|||^^^_ 



ESS A YS. 81 

the capital of Islam, — he must be accounted one 
of the few great sovereigns on the roll of history. 
But in what sense can we speak of him as a Chris- 
tian? Morally lawless, shrinking from no crime, 
guilty of the worst, how could the Church receive 
him as such? Toward the close of his life he 
received Christian baptism. We may hope that 
something of conviction accompanied the rite ; as 
much, perhaps, as was possible to a nature like his. 
But previous to that, on the simple ground of his 
patronage, how could Christians consent to submit 
to the arbitration of the homicide, the filicide, the 
conjugicide, questions of Christian doctrine and 
discipline? Their doing so is proof of spiritual 
degeneracy consequent on temporal success. Con- 
stantino had the sagacity to see the necessity of 
conciliating the Christian interest, destined to be 
the most influential element in his dominion. 
Whatever may be the truth concerning the al- 
leged vision of the cross, there can be no doubt 
of his hearty belief in the tovt^ vUa, 

Before grappling with Maxentius he had his 
battle-flag stamped with the monogram of Christ. 
After the victory of the Milvian Bridge he issued, 
in conjunction with Licinius, an edict which not 
only permitted the Christians to rebuild their 
churches, but restored to them the property in 

houses and lands which under Diocletian had been 

6 



82 CHRISTIANITY AND BELLENISM. 

confiscated for tlie use of the State. He ordainod 
a tax on land for the support of Christian worship, 
he exempted the Christian clerus from military 
service, and forbade labor, excepting agricultural, 
on Sundays. And when Licinius, abandoning his 
former position and ranging himself frankly on tlie 
Bide of the old religion, had been overcome and 
elain in battle, Constantine, then sole Emperor, 
formally espoused the Christian cause and di- 
verted the funds of some of the Gentile temples 
to the use of the Christian. But that tliese demon- 
strations were acts of State policy, and not of 
religious conviction, must have been sufficiently 
evident to all his subjects. His aim was to equalize 
and, if possible, to harmonize the different confes- 
sions. He had no intention, at first, of breaking 
with polytheism. He still retained the title of 
pontifex maiimus. In the New Rome which he 
founded on the Bosphorus, moved thereto by SibjU 
line and other prophecies (that of the " Apocalypse " 
among the rest), which predicted the fall of Rome 
on the Tiber, he caused to be erected, along with 
several Christian churches, a temple to C&stor and 
Pollux, one to Rhea, the mother of the gods, and 
one to the Tyche, the Fortune of the city. An im- 
age of this TycUe occupied the centre of the cross 
upheld by the united haads of the colossal atatuea 
of the Emperor and his mother, Helena. 



1 



t*ma 



ESS A YS. 88 

So far from renouncing the honor of the apothe- 
osis bestowed on his predecessors, he made special 
provision for it by ordaining that annually, in all 
coming time, a golden statue of himself should be 
borne in procession through the city, and that the 
Emperor for the time being should prostrate himself 
before it. On the top of a monolith of porphyry 
he had placed a statue of Apollo, re-dedicated to 
himself, with a halo of rays formed, it was said, 
of nails taken from the cross which Helena had 
brought from Jerusalem. Between the nails the 
inscription : '^ To Constantino shining like the sun, 
presiding over his city, an image of the new-risen 
Son of Righteousness." This column, we are told, 
was long an object of formal worship to the Chris- 
tians of Constantinople. 

All this was polytheism over again. And these 
measures, conceived in the spirit of the old religion, 
were subsequent to the Council of Nicaea, at which 
the Emperor had presided with hands yet red from 
the recent murder of Crispus. 

Constantino was no worse than many a Christian 
ruler of later time. Our resentment against him is 
not on account of his crimes as such, but as viewed 
in the light of the praises bestowed upon him by 
Christian ecclesiastical historians. Eusebius, the 
cringing courtier, characterizes him as one ^^ adorned 
with every virtue of religion." Ecclesiastical policy 



84 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 

forbade the censure of his crimes. Tlio credit of 
the CImrch was more to tlie historian than the 
cause of truth. There is not a more hateful crear 
ture in human guise than your typical ecclesiastic. 
" Will ye speak wickedly for God ? will ye talk de- 
ceitfully for him?" Job aaks of his friends. Talk- 
ing deceitfully for God, and, where the temper of 
the time permitted, killing and laying waste for 
God, has been the practice of ecclesiastical policy 
in every age. The Christian ecclesiastica of the 
new-born Church are uo exception. " Lying," says 
Maurice, in his Lectures on Church History, " is the 
first crime wo hear of after the descent of the Holy 
Spirit. It is of this that we shall have to hear at 
every step as we proceed in the history. ... I shall 
have to tell you of lies ottered by had men and 
by good men. . . . The Church testifieB of God as 
much through its falsehoods and its sins as through 
its truth and its virtues." 

The Church of the fourth century could boast 
a few choice spirits, — a- Gregory Nazianzen, an 
Athanasiua, a Basil, a Theodore of Mopsuestia; 
but take them in the mass, as they figure in his- 
tory, the ecclesiastics of that day were a disrep- 
utable lot, — conspicuous among them a brutal 
George of Gappadocia and a Lucifer of Cagliari ' 
In the fifth century we have a murderous Cyril, a 
Dioscums, and ihe incredible atrocities of the two 



MIk 



ESS A YS. 85 

snccedsive Councils of Ephesus. How they wran- 
gled ! Scarce escaped persecution themselves, how 
they persecuted one another, staking the integrity 
of the Church on a vocable, an iota, contemptu- 
ously indifferent to questions of morality, demand- 
ing only correctness of doctrine! A bishop is 
charged with unchastity. " What do we care about 
his chastity ? Is he orthodox ? That is the ques- 
tion." "Worse than a Sodomite is he who will 
not call Mary the Mother of God ! May fire from 
heaven consume him! May the earth open and 
swallow him ! " 

If Christianity were simply Christ-likeness, a life 
conformed to the precepts of the Gospel, it had 
well-nigh died out with the triumph of the Church 
over civil despotism. If the only fruits of the 
Spirit were those which Paul emphasizes, — love, 
joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, meek- 
ness, — then the Spirit might seem, in those years, 
to have fled up to heaven, like the starry goddess of 
the Golden Age, and left the Church to her own 
devices. But the Spirit had not departed; the 
Spirit has other business besides the cultivation of 
these moral graces so commended by the Apostle. 
Through all the turmoil of those angry years, 
through all the clamor of clashing tongues and 
crazy Councils, through all the wrangling, the 
wrath, and the wrong, the Spirit was at work 



86 cnRTSTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 

developing in Christian consciousness and asaiBting 
to formulate a new conception of Godhead, — o£ 
Godhead In ita htiman relations. This conception, 
partly by instinctive perception and partly by prov- 
idential coiijimction, got itself formulated in the 
doctrine of the Trinity as enunciated in the Creeds 
of Nicaea and Constantinople and supplemented by 
that of Chalcedon, — a doctrine of immense signifi- 
cance, combining what is true in Judaism with 
what is true in Hellenism, and if not a complete 
statement of Deity (inasmuch as it leaves material 
Nature out of view), if not a finality, yet a great 
advance on former conceptions, connecting, as it 
does, the human, through identity of spirit, with the 
divine.' 

For thirty years the Chnrch had enjoyed the 
advantage, such as it was, of Imperial patroni^. 
A generation had passed since GhristiaDity had 
flourished as the Court religion. But now an un- 
looked-for reverse. The Throne repudiates Chris- 
tianity and bestows its patronage on poljiheism. 
Christian historians have treated this reaction as 
something monstrous, and the term *< Apostate" 

> It may seem iacoDgnionB, in ft "nnitarian Review," to 
Bpeak favorftblj of the doctrine of the Trinity ; but the tree 
meaning of the Nicseau-Conatantmopolit&n creed ia something 
very different from the TrinitarianiBm justly repudiated by 
Uie UoitarioQ protest 



I^^SjiaiaMHkAM. 



ESS A YS. 87 

coupled with the name of Julian, conveys a sen- 
tence of reprobation to this day. But the backward 
step, although politically and philosophically a great 
mistake, was very natural, and, on the whole, cred- 
itable. Consider the circumstances. Deprived in 
infancy of a mother who might have won him to 
the Christian cause and given a Christian direction to 
his life ; losing at the age of sixteen his father and 
all his near kindred, with the exception of his half- 
brother, by an insurrection of the Imperial troops ; 
placed in confinement and subjected to compulsory 
Christian instruction, — he learned in early life to 
judge of Christianity by what he saw of it, which 
was contemptible, and by what he experienced of 
it, which was galling ; and, on the other hand, to 
judge of polytheism by what he gathered from the 
best literature of the ages in wliich it flourished. 
His imagination was impressed by the grand tradi- 
tions of olden time ; his intellect was fed and fired 
by the poets and philosophers of Greece. What 
had the Church to set off against these for a youth 
whose heart had never been reached by the Gospel, 
for whom it was a question between the religion of 
the Court and that of probably the larger portion 
of the Empire? All that he knew of the Court 
religion was petty intrigue and disgraceful broils, 
quarrels about homoounon and homoiou9ion. Add 
to this that the chivalrous spirit of the youth was 



88 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 

roused in favor of the oppressed by the persecntions 
with which Constantius harassed the adherents of 
the old religion. 

When, therefore, in 361, the army which he com- 
manded in Gaul, impressed by his military gemas 
and his eminent virtues, proclaimed him Emperor, 
and wlien the death of Constantius left him free to 
follow the promptings of his spirit, he openly es- 
poused the cause of Hellenism, and in all sincerity 
and with all tlio zeal of a new convert applied 
himself to the restoratioa of the ancient cult It 
is curious to consider that precisely the two noblest, 
the two most religious, in the long line of the 
August! should have been zealous opponents of 
the Christian cause. Julian ranks next to Aurelius 
in purity of life and earnestness of soul. His con* 
temporary and fellow-soldier, Ammianue MarcelH- 
nus, the sagacious Latin historian of the fourth 
century, declares that there was in him the material 
of a hero of the old Greek type ; that in other times 
he might have been an Achilles or an Alexander, 
but that the age and circumstances in which he 
lived made him a Sophist. His native ambition 
degenerated into vanity and love of popularity : 
" Tulgi plausibus laetus, laudum, etiam in minimis 
rebus, intemperans adpetitor." Gregory Nazianzen 
ascribed to him the hearing of a madman. Voltaire, 
in his epigrammatic fashion, characterizes him as 



1 



ESSAYS. 89 

^^ faithless to the faith and faithful to reason, the 
scandal of the Church and the model of kings." 
His writings which have come down to us, com- 
posed amid the distractions of public life, exhibit a 
sprightly intellect, more witty than profound. The 
two satires, " The Caesars " and the " Misopogon," are 
the most characteristic ; they bear comparison with 
the writings of Lucian, the wittiest of the ancients. 
The most important of his productions for the 
modern Christian reader is the so-called ^^ Defence 
of Paganism," which in fact is only a criticism of 
Christianity. The criticism is poor from our point 
of view, but curious as illustrating the aspect which 
dogmatic Christianity presented to an outsider of 
that day. It is noticeable that the author uniformly 
addresses the Christians as Galileans, and indeed 
commanded that they should bear that name. 

It is not for a moment to be supposed that Julian 
expected, by his example and Imperial authority, to 
roll back the tide of opinion and uproot the plant of 
three hundred years' growth which overshadowed 
his realm. The uttermost he hoped to accomplish 
was to infuse new life into Hellenism, to restore to 
it somewhat of its ancient splendor, to make it an 
attractive rival of the Christian Church ; but even 
this proved to be beyond his power. The thing was 
too decrepit to be galvanized into any respectable 
show of life. It is pitiful to read of his disappoint- 



90 cnniSTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 

menta in this endeavor. He attempted to rebuild 
the temple of Jeruaalpm and to consecrate it to 
Gentile worahip, Immenae sums were devoted to 
the enterprise ; but tlie workmen were repelled, as 
Ammianus relates, by bursting fires, and forced to 
desist from tlieir labors. He undertook to restore 
tlie oracle at Delplios, which had long ceased to 
give answers. " Tell the sovereign," was the re- 
poi-t made to the commissioner, " tliat the won- 
drous structure has sunk into dust. Apollo has 
not so much as a but left, no prophetic laurel ; the 
speaking fountain has gone silent." He went about 
to celebrate, after long intermission, the annual 
festival of Apollo in the grove of Daphne, near 
Antioch. He repaired to the spot in person, i& 
his character of pontifex maximus, expecting to 
'witness the ancient pomp of sacrifice. ** But vhen 
I arrived," he says, in the " Misopogon," " I foond 
neither incense nor wafers nor victim. An old 
priest had brought the god a goose, but the rich 
city nothing, neither oil for the lamps nor wine for 
a drink-offering. . . . And yet [addressing the citi- 
zens of Antioch] you allow your wives to give 
everything your house affords to the Galileans, to 
feed their poor." 

All this while the Christiana never doubted the 
result. "'Tis a cloud," said brave Athanasius, 
" which will soon blow over." When the prospect 



■■■■I 



ESS A YS. 91 

looked most encouraging to the Gentiles, Libanius 
the philosopher is said to have taunted a Christian 
acquaintance with the question, "How now about 
your carpenter's son ? " The answer was : " The 
carpenter's son is making a coffin for him in whom 
you have placed your hope." 

Julian was too wise, perhaps too merciful, to 
adopt the severe measures of former Emperors 
against the Christians. He knew too well what 
kind of harvest springs from the blood of martyrs. 
But in a mild way he allowed himself to persecute 
by invidious discriminations in favor of polytheism, 
and by exclusion of Christians from many of their 
former privileges. Ammianus himself, though sid- 
ing with the Emperor in the main, condemns the 
edict by which Christian scholars were forbidden 
to teach the classics, and Christian children to re- 
ceive instruction in Greek lore, on the ground that 
they could not do justice to writers whose religion 
they contemned. The prohibition was keenly felt 
by the Christians, and, to supply the loss of classic 
literature, ApoUinarius wrote a heroic poem on the 
fortunes of the Hebrew people from the creation of 
the world to the time of Saul, in which, as honest 
Sozomen assures us, he far surpassed Homer. He 
also wrote comedies after the manner of Menander, 
tragedies in imitation of Euripides, odes on the 
model of Pindar. "I doubt not/' says Sozomen, 



92 CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 

with exquisite eimplicity, " that if it were not for 
the prejudice iu favor of the old authors, the writ- 
ings of ApoUiiiarius would bo held iu as high 
estimation as those of tlie ancients." 

Julian was not so bigoted as not to appreciate 
the immense superiority of the Christian Church 
over polytheism as a practical social religion. He 
saw very clearly where lay the strength of the 
Gospel, and exhorted his priesthood to imitate 
the philanthropy of the Galileans by establishing 
institutions like theirs for the entertainment of 
strangers, for the care of the poor and the sick, 
for instniction in the truths of religion ; to intro- 
duce preaching in their temples, and, generally, to 
copy Christian manners. It seems never to have 
occurred to him that the ordering of these things 
was a virtual acknowledgment of the claims of 
Christianity. " It is a shame to us," he writes, 
" that those impious Galileans not only provide for 
their own poor, but also for ours, whom we neg- 
lect." He failed to perceive that only a good tree 
can bring forth good fruit. 

Julian died at the age of thirty-one in an expe- 
dition against the Persians from which the warn- 
ings of his friends and even his own forebodings 
could not deter him. He was killed, it is said, by 
the treacherous spear of a soldier of his own army. 
The high-hearted, impetaoua youth, "Uie roman- 



ESSAYS. • 93 

ticist on the throne of the Caesars," had lived in 
vain for the cause he had espoused, but not in vain 
for that which he opposed ; for though his apostasy 
had occasioned some defections from the Church, 
some ignominious backslidings, and many bloody 
conflicts between the polytheists who counted on 
his patronage and the Christians whom he failed 
to protect, it served to reveal the weakness and 
decadence — the utter, hopeless decadence — of the 
GSentile faith. The experiment in which a Julian 
had failed would not be tried again. The old re- 
ligion was irrevocably doomed; had it only been 
allowed to die in peace a natural death ; but Chris- 
tian zeal would not permit. 

The time had come when the Christians were in 
a position to wreak their vengeance on the Gentiles ; 
and with the opportunity came the will. They has- 
tened to persecute the children of those who had 
persecuted their fathers. In vain the Scriptures 
read in their churches — the law of their religion — 
commanded: "Avenge not yourselves, but give 
place unto wrath ; " " Recompense to no man evil 
for evil." They perceived another law in their 
members. Constantino, as we have seen, while 
siding with the Christians, spared the adherents 
of the elder faith. It was re8er\'^ed for a Spaniard, 
a native of that land which in after years produced 
a Toi*quemada and blushed with the fires of the 




94 CHHISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 

InquiBition, to InBtitnte the firM omltM^U^fS lot tM 
Buppresaion of Paganism. We psM by an intenal 
of twenty years, from the dekA at JoUui to thtL 
reign of Theodoaius. Ilie Coandl vi OoDrtM^ 
tiaople had just completed &e dootrin* of tii» 
Trinity, when the new GmperM-, Iw^itieed bato tM. 
faith, and, in the language of Oibbon>** still g^o*^ 
ing with Uie warm feelings oi tegaaenMon," imaai 
an edict which prescribed the religian of Iiig ■«)>• 
jects. "It is our pleasure that all Uie natioM 
which are goverued by onr (dement^ and oodetv 
ation shall Hteadfaetly adhere to tlie religum irhioh 
was taught by Saint Peter to the Romans." " Let us 
believe in the sole deity of the Father, the Son, and 
the Holy Spirit, under an equal majesty and a pious 
trinity." Having thus dictated to his subjects, a 
large, if not the larger, portion of whom still wor- 
shipped as polytheiets after the manner of their 
fathers, he proceeded, by successive edicts, to hunt 
out and to stamp out every vestige of the faith 
which for BO many centuries had intcmpled aud 
inspired the two great nations which have scored 
the boldest characters on tlie scroll of pre-Christian 
history, and yielded — the one by its letters and 
arts, the other by its jurisprudence — such impor- 
tant contributions to the civilization of mankind. 

There were still, we are told, in the city of Rome 
three hundred temples in which sacrifice was 



ESS A YS. 96 

oflfered.^ These were now to be suppressed. In the 
year 885 an edict of the goyernment ordained that 
sacrifices should cease, and forbade on pain of tor- 
ture and death the function of the haruspex. Then 
began a systematic crusade, in which the Emperor 
conspired with the local bishops and monks to put 
an end to Gentile worship. An Imperial officer 
was despatched with full powers to close the tem- 
ples in the capital cities of the East. But the clos- 
ing of the temples did not satisfy the blind fury of 
Christian zealots. They must not only be closed, 
but destroyed. The most magnificent structures 
ever dedicated to the service of religion, the costly 
marvels of architectural art, — among them the 
famed Serapeum at Alexandria, — were ruthlessly 
given to the flames or levelled with the ground, 
and where resistance was made by the votaries, 
the carnage of previous centuries was renewed. 
The new religion availed no more than the old 
to tame the tiger that has its lair in the human 
breast. 

The persecutions suffered by Christians under 
Roman Emperors of the second and third centuries 
are well known. Writers of Church history have 
seen to it that they should not pass into oblivion. 
Not so well known are the persecutions inflicted by 
Christians in power on their Gentile subjects and 
^ Lasaulx, Der Untergang des Helieniamaa. 



CHRISTIANITY AND HELLENISM. 



fellow-citizens. LasauU, in a mouograph devoted 
to tbe subject,^ has presented tliem in one view in 
the order of their Buccession, — a long story, and 
profoundly tragic ! If the slaughter was less, the 
atrocity was greater, as perpetrated by diaeiples of 
a religion whose plainest precepts were violated by 
it, Tbe Christian conscience of the time appears 
to have been less shocked by these enormities than 
by the treatment of the orthodox under Arian rale, 
although Socrates docs admit that the murder of 
Hypatia, the beautiful and learned lecturer of Alex- 
andria, whose body was stripped and mangled witii 
oyster-shells by Christian fanatics, was discreditable 
to Cyril and the Alexandrian Church. 

It had taken three centuries to place Christianity 
on the throne ; two more were required to complete 
the extinction by fire and sword of the vanquished 
fwth. Tho final act of the long tragedy was the 
closing of the schools of Athens by the Emperor 
Justinian. Already in the same year, 629, the 
founder of the Benedictine Order at Monte Casino 
had destroyed the last temple of 'Apollo and the 
adjacent grove, in which the pagans still sacrificed 
to their tutelar god. 

The end had come, the work was accomplished. 

The old heaven and the old earth had passed away. 

The Spirit had created " a new heaven and a new 

* Der Uotergang des Helleaiamua, 



'vnhwl ^ 



ESS A YS. 97 

earth." Can we add — could Christian conscious- 
ness, at that high solstice of the world's history, 
add — "wherein dwelleth righteousness"? Alas, 
no ! The looked-for righteousness was yet in abey- 
ance, far remote in the depths of time. It is still 
remote ; although nearer, let us trust, than in those 
early years of grace. 

What, then, was the aim of the Spirit in the 
founding of the Christian Church, — a work accom- 
plished at such fearful cost ? Not primarily good 
behavior. Had this been the end, there would 
have been a rapid and marked improvement in 
the morals of society. But no such improvement 
appears. Salvian, a Christian presbyter of Aries, 
writing about the middle of the fifth century, com- 
plains that " the Church of Grod itself, which should 
be pleasing in the sight of God, is but the provoker 
of God's wrath." " With the exception of the very 
few who shun evil (^praeter paucissimos quosdam 
qui mala fugiunt), what is the whole body of 
Christians but a sink of vices ? " 

A new world the Spirit had builded ; but much 
of the old material went into the building. Mo- 
rality was not its primary aim. That will come 
in due season, when the work is complete. The 
moral law, by the " Power that makes for righteous- 
ness," will finally vindicate itself. The aim of the 
Spirit in the founding of the Christian Church I 

7 



98 CHRlSTIANlTr AND HELLENISM. 

suppose to have been this : to provide a matrix 
and nursery for certain ideas, notably for these 
three, — the idea of a divine humanity embodied in 
the doctrine of the Trinity ; tlie idea of the soli- 
darity of the human race; the idea of a heavenly 
kingdom in this earthly world. When these ideas 
have taken full poBsession of tlie mind and heart 
of humanity and have actualized themselves in 
human life, then Christianity will have fulfilled 
its mission ; then the Spirit will cast aside the 
sheltering hull of ecclesiasticism ; the Church, no 
longer a separate organism, will be merged in 
society ; the secular and the spiritual, principially 
and practically one, will realize at last in their 
full consummatioQ the " new heaven and new earth 
wherein dwelleth righteousnesB," 



FEUDAL SOCIETY. 

IN histoid there is properly no beginning, no 
record of a time when civil society was abso- 
lutely and altogether new. Society, like the indi- 
vidual, has no knowledge of its own birth. The 
earliest which history can trace and ascertain is 
not the earliest that has been, but refers us to 
something still more remote, unchronicled, inscru- 
table. Every nation that now exists was the off- 
spring of another. Every nation known to history 
was the offspring of another; and the eldest are 
lost in prehistoric night. Every civil and social 
institution has elements derived from an unex- 
plored and dateless time. Nations, institutions, 
and events are the varying phases of a stream 
whose source is unknown, and equally unknown 
its issues. History reports what appears, and 
leaves to antiquarian surmise at one end, and to 
philosophic speculation at the other, the conjec- 
tural begmnings and endings. 

And as there is no beginning, so in history 
there is no retrocession or decline. The thousand 
years which intervened between the fall of the 



100 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 

Western Empire in the fifth oentorj and that of 
the Eastern in the fifteenth are commonly regarded 
as a period of arrested development, a halt in tiie 
march of humanity, or even a retreat. The arrest 
we may grant, but only in the sense in which the 
winter that arrests the vegetation of one season 
guards the germs of the next. The Gr»co-Bomaa 
civilization was defunct ; but a new civilization was 
steadily forming beneath the frosts of mediasval 
years. History is never retrograde. Nations may 
degenerate, arts may perish; but humanity never 
halts. There is always progress somewhere, in 
some things. The same nature which produced 
the Greek and Roman civilities was just as vigor- 
ous and just as productive in the age of Hildebrand 
as in that of Pericles or that of Augustus. If it 
did not produce the same things, it produced others 
which were quite as needful. The philosophic 
historian sees nothing retrograde in all those cen- 
turies, but unbroken progress, the steady germina- 
tion of seed that was sown while Rome was still 
in the zenith of her power. He sees no perishing 
world, but a world in genesis, — an immense future 
struggling into birth. In every falling leaf of the 
Graeco-Roman civilization he sees the forward 
shoot of the Christian, which pushed it from its 
stem. 
The distinguishing feature of mediseval life is 



^■■■■■MMMaMi 



ESS A YS. 101 

Feudalism. To understand feudalism, we must 
study its origin in the semi-barbarous society of 
the German tribes antecedent to the Christian era. 
The ancient Germans, as Tacitus describes them, 
differed from the Romans, the Greeks, and the 
Oriental nations in not inhabiting cities, but thinly 
settled rural districts governed by chiefs, who in 
turn were subject to the king of the nation or tribe. 
This circumstance gave to the mediaeval politics 
their distinguishing character as compared with 
the ancient States. The basis of the ancient State 
was the civic corporation; that of the mediaeval 
was landed possession, the possessor being bound 
by feudal tenure to the Crown. The king was elec- 
tive, but chosen from certain noble families, not 
from the people at large. The leaders under him 
were selected for their warlike qualities. Begea 
ex nolilitate^ duces ex virtute sumunt^ says Tacitus. 
Each king had a hundred followers or associates 
chosen from among the people, called in Latin 
eomitea (centeni singulis ex plehe comites^^ from 
which our English count, county, country. 

In German, the comites were called i^esellen 
(companions), from which, it is supposed, our 
English word vassal is derived. Vassal and count 
are identical terms. Vassalage, etymologically 
speaking, is not bondage, but fellowship, peerage. 
The Germans had slaves ; but these were captives 



102 FEUDAL SOOISTT. 

of vex, or Boch aa had lost tlisir freedom in gunet 
of chance. 

Another peculiarity of the Qtaman tribei -wtm 
their respect for women, to whom they aooorded ft 
much higher rank than was erer aasigned to them 
by Greece or Rome. They irere ibo oonnMllora 
of the nation, diligently amsnlted in all nutten 
of public moment. They followed their hnriMods 
and brothers to the wars, Btimnlated them irith 
their cries, and sometimes decided the battle by 
their interposition. In acoordanoe irith this rer* 
erence for the " ever womanly," the QermSD, -witii 
its cognates, is the only European language in 
which to this day the sun ia feminine and the 
moon masculine. Guizot makes light of this trait 
of the German forest, or of Tacitus's testunony 
regarding it. But I think we have here tiie proto- 
type of a very marked feature of medifeval civiliza> 
tion, — the loyalty to woman, exhibited practically 
in the courtesies of chivalry, and poetically in the 
lays of the Minnesingers. 

Once more. The Gennan aborigines were pre- 
eminently a nation of warriors. All barbarous 
nations are given to fighting; but the Germans 
seem more than any other to have exemplified the 
doctrine of Hobbes, that war is man's natural 
state. Nihil nm armati agunt. They carried war 
into everything. It was their business, their pas- 



iMHHMMMi 



ESSA YS. 103 

time, their politics, their religion. When there 
was no foreign enemy to encounter, they made 
war upon each other; they invaded neighboring 
territories, and sought in every possible way to 
keep themselves in training for the great work of 
life. In these military expeditions the king was 
attended by his camiteSy or counts, between whom 
and himself there subsisted an intimate and indis- 
soluble bond. They bound themselves to accom- 
pany him through life, and to accompany him in 
death. He bound himself to stand by them in all 
straits, to find them food and equipment in return 
for their services, and to give them their share of 
the plunder. 

We have here the rudiments of the feudal sys- 
tem, — a system in which independence and loy- 
alty were singularly blended, "the system," says 
Heeren, " of people who had a good deal of fight- 
ing to do, and very little money." Suppose, now, 
a clan or tribe of these warriors at the end of one 
of their predatory excursions to settle in some 
province of the Roman Empire. Let that tribe 
be the Franks, with Glovis at their head. Let 
that province be the western part of Gaul, which 
took from them the name of France. There it 
was that the feudal system was soonest developed 
and most clearly defined. Glovis is a German 
prince, attended by his duceSj or dukes, the lead- 



104 FEUDAL SOCIBTT. 

en sezt in command, by his and their eomU»$, or 
counts, and other warriors of inferior note. Thej 
Battle in Gaul. Clovis becomes king of France. 
The ancient inhabitants are diapoBSessed. Some 
of them become serfs or slaves. Others, and espe- 
cially the clergy, by means of soperior abi]it7 
attain to posts of honor aronnd the Throne. Stnoe 
of them in process of time become Tassals of the 
Crown. 

The land is divided into distriota, and over each 
district is placed one of the counts as magiHtrate 
and collector of revenues. Hence the term eompt^, 
" county." A dux, or duke, had charge of sev- 
eral counties. These offices, held originally during 
the pleasure of the king, were afterward heredi- 
tary, and laid the foundation of that power by 
which the nobles in time became rivals of the 
Throne. The rest of the warriors received by al- 
lotment or obtained by pillage portions of land, 
which tliey held in their own right, with power of 
devise, and subject to no condition but the gen- 
eral burden of public defence. These estates were 
called athdiai, — a word denoting absolute property, 
in distinction from feudal. The feudal estates were 
benefices or grants made by the king to his favor- 
ites (^Gatindi, Antrustiona, Leudet) out of the 
reserved fiscal or Crown lands, not as absolute 
property, but as a temporary loan, to be returned 



MM 



ESSAYS. 105 

on the death or forfeiture of the occnpant, who 
during possession was bound to render fealty and 
military service, when required, to the grantor. 
We see here repeated the same principle which 
connected the rex, or the dux, in the forests of 
Germany with his comitea, or vassals. The holder 
of such a benefice was the vassal of the Grown. 

The benefices in time became hereditary; and 
then commenced another stage in the feudal pro- 
cess, — subinfeudation. The holders of grants from 
the Grown made new grants of portions of their es- 
tates to new beneficiaries, who received them on 
similar terms, and sustained the same relation to 
the new grantor which he did to the Grown. They 
were his vassals ; he was their atizerain, or mesne 
lord. An estate so held was a feodum, or feud. 
The holder of a feud was bound to follow his lord 
to battle, albeit against his own kindred, when re- 
quired, and against his sovereign. He was bound 
to ride by his side in the field, to lend him his 
horse when dismounted, and to go into captivity as 
a hostage for him when taken prisoner. He was 
liable to certain pecuniary taxes, called "Reliefs 
and Aids," on taking possession of an hereditary 
fief, or when his lord made a pilgrimage to Jerusa- 
lem or gave his sister or eldest son in marriage, or 
took a new investiture of his own fief. On the other 
hand, the suzerain, or feudal lord, was under obli- 



106 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 



gationa equally binding to his vassal. He was 
Tassal's sworn protector, ally, and friend, the bsljisr 
of his necessity, the avengM- <d his irnnigB. He 
voB required to make indemnlfiMtiott ff the teoanft 
was evicted of his land. In Nonnandy and in Bng- 
land he was his tenant's guardian daring sdnorUy. 
In this capacity he was authorized to proride hli 
female wards with husbands; and they, an their 
part, were bound to accept the hoabandB, or to pay 
as mnch in the way of molrt as the suitor was 
willing to give for his wife. Li the Latin kingdom 
of Jerusalem, where the feudal system developed 
some peculiarities, — the result of insulation, — a 
singular custom prevailed. The lord could compel 
a female tenant to marry one of three suitors whom 
he might present to her choice. The candidates 
must be of equal rank with herself, but one of them 
she was bound to accept No avowed disinclina- 
tion to wedlock in general, no repugnance to the 
given candidates in particular, could exempt her 
from this necessity. To females advanced in life, 
one alternative remained. It the lady would de- 
clare herself to be sixty years of age, the right 
to single-blessedness was not denied her. Of this 
dilemma it does not appear which horn was pre- 
ferred in any recorded case. 

The feudal system, once established, pervaded 
the whole structure of society. It embraced the 



:a his ^1 



ESS A VS. 107 

clergy as well as the laity. The dignitaries of the 
Church and the abbots of monasteries were the 
yassals of the sovereign or prince, of whom their 
lands were held in fief. They had their own vassals, 
who held of them. They were bound, in return for 
their possessions, to swear fealty and to render 
military service, if not by taking arms, by sending 
their vassals into the field. 

There was one species of feudal tenure which 
appears in strange contrast with modern ideas of 
dignity and rank ; that is, the tenure of menial 
office. Nobles did not disdain to hold such offices 
about the person or the household of a king or 
superior, such as cup-bearer, farrier (rnarSohaV), 
stabler (^constable) ^ bearer of dishes (^seneschal). 
Here, again, a marked trait of the old German life. 
The German loved independence, it was the breath 
of his nostrils. But with this love of independence 
he combined a sentiment which might seem at first 
incompatible with it, — the sentiment of loyalty, 
enthusiastic devotion to the person of his chief ; a 
devotion which to his mind invested even menial 
offices, rendered to that chief, with glory. In after 
times the title remained, while the original function 
was forgotten. France has still her marshal, al- 
though that functionary has no longer the care of 
stable or stud. His predecessor in the Merovingian 
era did not disdain that function; he owed to it 



■'vfe H 



108 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 

his title and his estates. The Elector of Saxony 
was formerly marshal of the Gennaii Empire. A 
symbol of his f unctiou long survived in the veisel 
of oats which the Elector, in person or by deputy^ 
presented to the Emperor at his coronaticm, as de* 
scribed by Gk)ethe, who witnessed when a boy the 
coronation of Joseph 11. The ascendency of tibe 
ecclesiastical power in the twelfth centory is illus- 
trated by the fact that the Enq)eror Frederic Bar« 
barossa held as a fief from the Bishop of Bamberg 
the office of seneschal, or bearer of dishes. 

The basis of feudal polity, as I hare said, — that 
by which it is especially distinguished from ancient 
civilization, — was landed possession. The ancient 
civilization was municipal. The Greeks and Ro- 
mans lived in cities and compact settlements. The 
Germans, as we learn from Tacitus, lived scattered 
over large districts, each freeman lord of his own 
territory, — a custom strictly maintained by their 
posterity in mediseval Europe, and one which has 
exercised an immense influence on modern Euro- 
pean civilization. The ancient noble, however ex- 
tensive his landed possessions, was still a citizen, 
the member of a compact civic body. His property 
bound him more closely to the State, and the State 
to him. The property of a mediaeval nobleman, on 
the contrary, tended to seclude him from the rest 
of the world. The essence of feudalism is insula- 



AMBMMM 



ESS A YS. 109 

tion. The proprietor, instead of connecting him- 
self with civic organizations, planted himself on his 
territory, solitary, remote, and became the head 
and nucleus of a little community of his own which 
gathered around the feudal castle and subsisted by 
him and for him. These communities were practi- 
cally sovereign and independent States. The feu- 
dal lord possessed the rights and exercised the 
three most important functions of a monarch, — 
the right to make war, the right to coin money, and 
the right of supreme judicature (la haute justice) ; 
that is, the right to inflict capital punishment with- 
in his domain. In the exercise of this last-named 
function antiquarians notice a ludicrous distinction 
between different orders of nobility. Every man 
who was entitled to a fortified castle might exercise 
haute juBtice^ he might hang offenders within his 
domain. But the rank of the lord was indicated 
by the number of posts in his gallows. A baron 
could hang his subjects on a gallows with four 
posts. A chdtelain^ or possessor of a castle who 
was not a vassal of the Crown, was restricted to 
three posts. A lord inferior to the chdtelain^ the 
lowest in the scale of nobility, must serve the cause 
of justice as well as he could with a two-posted 
gibbet. 

Such independence was of course entirely in- 
compatible with the existence of a central and con- 



110 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 

trolling power in the Cro^m. We read of a king of 
France, of England, of Germany ; but this title pre- 
vious to the fourteenth century was little more than 
nominal. Tho king waa merely one noble among 
many, with perhaps more numerous va89al8 and a 
court, but with no more actual power than many of 
tho barons of his realm. The problem of medltcval 
history was to counteract and overcome this sepa- 
ratism, to develop the nation against the nobles, 
and to establish the centra! power of the Crown 
over feudal independence. This end was soonest 
and most completely accomplished in that country 
There feudalism found its earliest and fullest devel- 
opment, — in France, which differed from Germany 
in having an hereditary instead of an elective moa- 
archy, and from England in the earlier resumption 
of fiefs by the Crown at the expiration of the feu- 
dal tenure. The French BOvereign at the close of 
the tiiirteenth century had achieved an ascendency 
which the English did not attain until after the 
Wars of the Boses. 

To this separative tendency of feudalism we owe 
one of the principal characteristics of modern civil- 
ization as contrasted with that of the ancients; 
namely, the preponderance of the country va na- 
tional polity. The ancient nations were mostly de- 
pendencies of capital cities, and are called by the 
names of their capitals, — as Athens, Borne, Sparta, 



IMMMBWa 



ESS A YS. Ill 

Carthage. The destruction of the capital involved 
that of the nation. Modern nations, on the con- 
trary, are named after their respective races, — 
France, England, Germany; and notwithstanding 
the disproportionate influence of the capital in some 
cases, as of Paris in France, they have an existence 
independent of the capital, and would continue to 
exist if the capital were destroyed. 

Of later origin than feudalism, but not less widely 
diffused, was the institution of chivalry, — another 
marked trait of the Middle Age. It affected pro- 
foundly the character and tone of mediaeval society, 
but rather in the way of moral influence than by 
any organic action on the time. It created no new 
political Order, but grafted on the class of nobles 
and freemen an additional social distinction for all 
who embraced it, as most of the nobles, for lack of 
other occupation, were fain to do. The title of a 
knight, or knight-banneret, so long as it repre- 
sented the reward of valor alone, was the highest 
distinction known to that period. Kings were 
proud to add the prefix of Sir to the royal title. 
It conferred important privileges, among which in 
some countries was exemption from taxes. But it 
was not hereditary. It founded no lineage : it ex- 
pired with the individual on whom it was conferred. 
It did not modify the organic structure of society. 
It was bloom and polish, not substance nor form. 



:-, jsK.^. 



112 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 

Chivalry was eminently a Christiaii institaiion. 
It was the application of Ohristianity to the busi- 
ness of arms. It was the use of arms for the 
redemption of society. With it was associated 
also the old German reverence for women. It 
gave lustre and sweetness to an age which else 
had been one of unmitigated barbarism. Morally 
it is very significant, as illustrating the remedial 
power of human nature, — that power by which, 
when evils become intolerable, society reacts on its 
own excesses and rights its own wrongs. 

In our own country, in the new commonities of 
the West, when the law is feeble and the consti- 
tuted tribunals deficient in authority, the savage 
but needful Lynch law or vigilance committee sup- 
plies the defect. Chivalry was a modification of 
the same principle more worthily embodied, and 
authorized with religious sanctions. The knights 
were self-constituted judges and avengers of social 
wrong. The knight-errant was a missionary, a 
military evangelist, operating with spear and sword 
instead of the word. He was consecrated to his 
work with solemn and religious ceremonies, and 
had something of the priestly character. His 
moral code was not very extensive. It contained 
but four articles ; but these were rigorously en- 
forced. It enjoined truth, hearing Mass, fasting 
on Friday, and the succoring of dames. 



ESSA YS. 118 

'< And thos the fourfold discipline was told. 
Still to the truth direct thy strong desire, 
And flee the very air where dweUs a liar. 
Fail not the Mass ; there still with reverent feet 
Each mom be found, nor scant thine offering meet. 
Each week's sixth day with fast subdue thy mind, 
For 't was the day of passion for mankind : 
Else let some pious work, some deed of grace. 
With substituted worth fulfil the place. 
Haste thee, in fine, when dames complain of wrong, 
Maintain their right, and in their cause be strong ; 
For not a wight there lives, if right I deem, 
Who holds fair hope of well-deserved esteem. 
But to the dames by strong devotion bound. 
Their cause sustains, nor faints for toil or wound." ^ 

The necessity of such an institution is explained 
by the lawless character of the times, by the social 
anarchy and predatory violence of a barbarous age. 
Europe was everywhere infested with robbers, who 
ravaged the country, made travelling unsafe, and 
agitated society with perpetual alarms. Peaceably 
disposed persons were subject to violence when- 
ever they ventured abroad, and were not always 
safe in their own homes. The boldness and nu- 
merical strength of these robber bands may be 
inferred from the fact that the highest dignitaries 
in Church and State, and even royal personages 
travelling with large escorts of armed followers, 
were attacked by them on the highway, plundered, 
and sometimes held prisoners until redeemed by a 

1 The Order of Knighthood, — Way's Fabliaux. 

8 



114 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 



iiiiglaQd ^H 



ransom. In 1285 the town ot Boston in England 
waa assailed and pillaged by a party of these 
marauders. 

la epltmdor and pomf^ th« oaatoms o£ cJuraliy 
far exceed all that modem life can exhibit in Ute 
way of spectacle and festave show. If mediwral 
Europe was poor in prodnctive indii8tr7« she was 
rich in knightly splendor and feativity. Whan we 
call up before us the idea of those ages, we hare a 
picture of nodding plumes, resplendent shields, 
and gay devices, a lavish display of gold and silver 
in knightly appointments. We see the compact 
body of cavaliers drawn ap before the baronial 
castle or pilgriming toward the Holy Land. We 
sec the gallant tournament with its rich capari- 
eona and pennoned lances, — 

" Where thronga of knights and barons bold 
In weeds of peace high tritunphs hold, 
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes 
Bain influence and jadge the prize," — 

a spectacle which in gorgeous appearance and stir- 
ring effect has probably never been surpassed. 

On the whole, the institution of chivalry was a 
wise and beneficent force, opposed to anarchy and 
violence, — a splendid vindication of haman nature 
against barbarism and social wrong. 

Its effect on literature is seen in the metrical 
productions of the twelfth, tbirteenUi, and four- 



ESS A YS. 116 

teenth centuries. The adventures and the manners 
of chivalry supplied authors of these productions, 
the Troubadours, Trouveurs, and Makers, with their 
materials and topics. And so completely was the 
mind of the time preoccupied with chivalric ideas 
that all topics were treated in the same fashion. 
The worthies of ancient history, the heroes of Plu- 
tarch and Homer, were metamorphosed into Chris- 
tian knights. Even Biblical characters underwent 
the same transformation. Adam Davie, a poet of 
the fourteenth century, represents Pilate as chal- 
lenging our Lord to single combat. In "Piers 
Ploughman's Vision" the soldier who pierced the 
Saviour's side is spoken of as a knight who came 
forth with his spear and jousted with Jesus. 

Intimately associated with the institution of chiv- 
alry, and characteristic of the time, was the grave 
importance attached by the higher orders of society 
to the sentiment of love. Knighthood, from the 
first, distinguished itself by devotion to woman, — 
a trait derived from the ancient Germans. Every 
knight had his lady-love, of whom he professed 
himself the devoted slave, and whose superiority 
to every other lady in creation he conceived it his 
duty to assert, if necessary, with spear and sword. 
According to the received comparison, a knight 
without a lady was like a sky without a sun. In 
this there was often more of affectation than of 



116 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 

true sentiment. The pretended passion was not of 
that practical character wliicli looks to matrimony 
aa its proper consummation, but an aristocratic 
fancy, perhaps an assumed one, cherishGd for its 
own sake, — an idea which served to atimulate 
valor, and beguiled tiie tediousness of uttoccupied 
hours ; a thing to dream of and to break a lance for, 
but not to be realized in the way of a domestic 
establishment. 

The most remarkable part of this lady-worship 
was the mystic importance, the metaphysical sub- 
tilties, and minute casuistry which the spirit of 
the time connected with thn Hiilijt^ct. 

Courts were established for the purpose of ad- 
justing all questions that might arise between lov- 
era or concerning them. Whether they really loved, 
what were the proofs of affection, what their mu- 
tual obligations^ — all this was determined by a 
regular code of love, compiled with great care, and 
considered as binding as the canons of the Church. 
All differences between lovers and all questions of 
gallantry were referred to these courts for adjudica- 
tion. They were presided over by kings, emperors, 
and even popes. They had all the usual officers, 
counsellors, auditors, masters of request. Their de- 
crees were duly reported, and illustrated by commen- 
taries pointing out their conformity to the principles 
of the Boman Law and the Fathers of the Church. 



OMMMBiai 



ESS A YS. IIT 

It may be doubted if the private, domestic life 
of women in these ages corresponded with this 
public devotion. Indeed, the whole system of chiv- 
alry owes much of its attraction to the medium of 
tradition and romance through which we view it, 
and loses its brilliancy on closer inspection, as the- 
atrical illusions are dispelled by a peep behind the 
scenes. If we could transport ourselves into those 
centuries, compare their fashions with ours, observe 
their daily life, and bring it to the test of modem 
refinement, we should see that the romance of chiv- 
alry is partly the effect of distance, which works 
enchantment in time as well as in space. 

If we could witness the scenes which were then 
exhibited in the way of theatrical entertainment ; 
if we could listen to the lays of the minstrels, or 
even, it is probable, to the language of the hall and 
bower ; if we could follow lady and knight in all 
the details of their daily life, and notice every 
point in the manners of the times, — we should 
find that the age which, as mirrored in novel and 
song, shows so courteous and fine, was in fact 
extremely coarse, indecent, and disgusting. The 
knight whose costly Tirmor shone so gayly in the 
lists would not, when stripped of his outer case, 
have seemed to modern refinement a very fasci- 
nating object. He often sacrificed to the splendor 
of helmet and hauberk what might have been more 




118 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 

profitably spent on a comfortable vudioto,- and 
vas richer in iron than in linen. OiTat or ottiar 
coarse perfume was needed to ^agmM tiie eCEecto 
of hard exerciae in woollen garments under iron 
armor. But medisval taate was not earioos in 
such matters. When the knight arrired at a oaatle 
where he was to lodge as gneat, the ladies ol the 
house came to meet him in the oonrt-jard, divested 
him of his armor, and clothed him in the loose 
upper robe which was worn witliin doors, and of 
which ever; family kept a snpply for viutors. 

The lady whom the knight elected as tbe mistress 
of his heart and life, and for whose charms he was 
ready to defy the world to mortal combat, could 
neither read nor write. She possessed none of the 
accomplishments or resources of a modern lady. 
Not that the want of intellectual culture was the 
lot of all the women of that age. Where it did 
exist, in convents and in some of the cities, it was 
carried to a greater extent than with us, as we see 
in the case of H^loise. But these were exceptions. 
Inability to read and write was the usual condition 
of the high-bom as well as of the lowly. 

It is fearful to think what ennui those hi^-bom 
dames must have suffered when left to their own 
devices in the absence of their knights and of out- 
door diversions. They lived in rooms which were 
bare not only of paint and paper, but also of plaster 



ESSAYS. 119 

or other internal architectural finish. The hall, 
and perhaps the ladies' bower, were hung with 
tapestry; that is, with pieces of figured canvas 
suspended upon hooks extending along the sides 
of the apartment, at a distance of about two feet 
from the wall. When the family removed, these 
were taken down and left only the bare stone walls. 
The floor was usually covered with straw or with 
rushes, not too often renewed, and harboring frag- 
ments of food and all manner of impurities. Our 
fine lady's wardrobe and household appointments, 
though not wanting in jewels and other splendors 
for festive seasons, were lamentably deficient in 
what are now regarded as the necessaries of life. 
She had no stockings to her feet, most likely no 
cloths to her table, possibly no sheets to her bed. 
If she had handkerchiefs, the supply was exceed- 
ingly limited, consisting of one or two for state 
occasions, and none for common use. She had no 
acconmiodations for sitting in her bower, except, 
perhaps, a stone seat in the embrasure of the win- 
dow, and her bed. Chairs were unknown. At 
meals, the company sat on rude wooden benches 
around coarse wooden tables. Waiters were abund- 
ant, but the table furniture was scanty and vile, to 
a degree very shocking to modem sensibility. A 
few pieces of plate, hereditary or plundered, graced 
the tables of the wealthy; but the dishes were 



120 



FEUDAL SOCIETF. 



mostly wooden trays, and the plates or treucliera 
were of the same material. The custom of a plate 
to each person waa a luxury undreamed of. One 
plate for two was the utmost allowance ; and at 
festive entertainments the gallantry of the age 
contrived to couple the sexea, so that each gentle- 
man should share his plat« with a lady. In the 
novel of " Launcelot du Lac," a lady whom her jeal- 
ous husband had compelled to dine in the kitchen 
complains that it is a very long time since any 
knight has eaten off the same plate with her. Gen- 
tleman and lady have a plate between them, but no 
fork. The fork is altogether a modem inveutioti. 
Eni^tly and fair fingers came into primary rela- 
tions with boiled and roast, — a fashion more primi- 
tive than nice, especially vhen we add the absence 
of napkins. 

On the whole, medieeval life appears more at- 
tractive in the field than it does within doors ; it 
shows better at a distance than it does on close 
inspection; and loses much of the bloom of its 
romance when we bring it fairly before us in its 
practical details. 

And yet we see only its best features as it passes 
before ns in the current history of the time. We 
see knights, nobles, and priests, — that class which 
in every age is most independent of circumstances, 
most able to help itself. We see little or nothing 



kiH 



ESS A YS. 121 

of the weaker classes, which form in every age so 
large a constituent of society. In mediaeval as in 
Greek and Roman civilization, the laboring classes, 
distinctively so called, were mostly slaves. 

The origin of slavery in the Middle Age was 
various. We find it existing among the German 
aborigines before their migration. Their slaves 
were either prisoners of war or criminals, or such 
as had staked their liberty at the gaming-table, 
and who probably lost nothing by exchanging 
bondage to a passion for bondage to an individual. 
The German tribes, when they migrated, took their 
slaves with them. They found slavery existing in 
the territories which they conquered. The Franks 
found servi and coloni in Roman Gaul, and the 
Normans found thralls and ceorU in Saxon Eng- 
land. Thus mediaeval bondage was in part the 
continuation of a previous institution. Another 
source of bondage, which seems strange to us, was 
self-sale. In that terrible period of anarchy, vio- 
lence, and famine which preceded the age of Hil- 
debrand, many a poor freeman was induced to sell 
his liberty for a maintenance, his person for bread. 
It was a choice of evils, in which, provided the 
master were humane, the servile alternative to a 
."hungry and peaceably disposed man was the more 
tolerable. A North American savage would have 
chosen differently. 



122 FEUDAL SOCIRTT. 

Another cause of self-eale, and anoQiA MMUOB of 
bondage still more abhorrent to modem ideas, iru 
the piety which induced some to eell tiieiiiaelTe* to- 
monasteries and religious sBtabluhmada ha tbs 
benefit of their prayers. In tins eue m know not 
which more to admire, — the prioe of interceiiion, 
or the faith in intercession vhioh wu willing to 
pay that price. 

The condition of the Jews in Xba ICddle Age 
was a kind of bondage peculiar to that period. 
The Christian world conceived Itself charged with 
the dnty of avenging on this wretched people tiie 
sins of their fathers. General massacres, sanc- 
tioned or connived at by government, from time 
to time gave vent to this retributory spite. In the 
absence of these, all kinds of exactions and oppres- 
sions distinguished the hated race. In the city 
of Touloose it was castomary for a priest at the 
Easter festival publicly to amito a Jew on the 
cheek at the gate of the principal church. Sis- 
mondi relates that on one occasion a powerful 
ecclesiastic felled to the earth and killed his vic- 
tim with this paschal blow. The Jews in each city 
had a separate quarter assigned to them for their 
residence, where tliey were locked up at nightfall. 
They were forced to wear a yellow pateh or homed 
hat, or other distinguishing badge, which indicated 
at the first sight the abhorred people. Two re- 



■feHBHHMM 



ESSA YS. 128 

markable facts illustrate the indomitable vigor and 
vitality of this wondrous race. One is that, with 
such inducements to abandon the religion of their 
fathers, they seldom embraced the Christian faith. 
The other is that, with all these oppressions and 
obstructions, they still throve, they grew rich. 
The commerce of the time was chiefly in their 
hands. They supplied the exchequer of kings and 
nobles, and are said in the time of Philip Augustus 
to have possessed one half of the city of Pai'is. 

Such was the state of society in Europe between 
the ninth and fourteenth centuries. Its distin- 
guishing feature, as compared with modern life, 
is rigid separation, seclusion, no central power, no 
free communication, no social flow, no point of 
union but the Church. The few cities were sharply 
defined against the surrounding country by pro- 
tecting walls. Within those walls the various 
classes and vocations were jealously screened and 
confined by traditionary guilds and corporations. 
In the country, instead of the open villages, ham- 
lets, and farms of modern civilization, the traveller 
found here and there the secluded monastery, with 
its offices and patches of cultivation, or the feudal 
castle perched on the brow of a hill, with its clus- 
tering huts nestling in anxious dependence around 
its base, the communicating drawbridge ever up, 
the warder on the tower forever on the watch to 



124 FEUDAL SOCIETY. 

detect the distant enemy. The City, the Monas- 
tery, the Castle, — these were the three enclosures 
which coutuned the three forms of mediteval life. 
All aroond and between a blank wilderness ; and 
each of these settlementSj the civic, the ecclesi- 
astic, and the fcndal, self-contained, self-complete, 
and as separate from the rest of the world as if 
divided by intervening seaa, — no openness, no ex- 
pansion, no public, no society but the pent-up life 
contained within the precincts of each particular 
fold. Feudalism developed individualily, it made 
marked and strong men; but all its conditions 
were adverse to civil order. 

There is nothing so difficult in history as to 
form a correct idea of the private life of past ages. 
Public life records iteelf in public monaments and 
written chronicles. But that which we most de- 
sire to know is precisely that which history does 
not reveal. What humanity most desires to know 
of the past is man, — humanity in its common 
domestic aspecte and functions, the daily ordinary 
life of ordinary men. Not how monarchs ruled 
and warriors fought and nobles feasted, but how 
John and Thomas sped and fared in their daily 
tasks and fortunes ; what was their programme for . 
the day and for the year ; how they amused them- 
selves in the intervals of labor ; what clothes they 
wore, and what was the cost of them, and what 



ESSAYS. 125 

they had for breakfast, dinner, and supper. Of 
battles fought by nations and tribes on public 
fields the old chronicles have given us abundant 
details. We accept these with all gratitude ; but 
we would also know of the daily battle of life, with 
what conditions and with what success it was 
fought on the common level by common men. Of 
this no record has survived ; but we are safe in as- 
suming that the net result and absolute gain in 
this warfare was the same to mediaeval man that 
it is to modem, — that, with all their defects of 
means and accommodations, they extracted as much 
of the pure juice of life from their hard condition 
as we do from ours. 

With all the progress humanity has made in 
other arts and kinds, there has been no progress 
in the art of life, if the art of life is to fill the 
twenty-four hours with the greatest number of 
pleasing sensations or the greatest amount of pro- 
fitable experience or profitable action. Every fa- 
cility and every accommodation — mechanica!, 
economical, literary — which advancing civilization 
brings with it, is compensated by corresponding re- 
quisitions ; and the labor of life for the individual 
is nowise superseded by it. The conditions may 
change, but the problem of life is ever the same. 
In every age the problem for the individual is how 
to make the most of a day, — to fill up the given 



126 FEUDAL SOCIBTY. 

mould of existence with an adeqnata flow of ood- 
Bcioua life. The mould is the Bams in tiw nine- 
teenth century that it was in the ninth ; and tlie 
filling up ia no easier now tiian it was then, and no 
more likely to be satisfactory. 

The question which huuumily asks of an age is 
not how fast it travels, nor with what deapatoh it 
gets tidings from abroad, nor how many printed 
sheets or yards of cloth it can torn out in a given 
time by steam-press and powei4oom ; but what haa 
it added to the sum of human ideas and human well- 
being, what spiritual growtiis have been perfected 
by it. Tried by this test, it is doubtful if steam, 
gas, and electro-maguetism have done more for 
man than feudalism and chivalry. They have mul< 
tiplied the facilities of life without changing in the 
least its essential quality. They have shortened 
the distance from point to point in space, but there 
is no railroad to happiuesa. No art has yet been 
discovered to shorten the distance between the 
ideal and the real, between desire and satisfaction, 
between here and there. 

Historic progress is not of men, but of man. 
Individuals are relatively no wiser and no better 
from age to age; but humanity advances all the 
white with sure and steady pace, receiving contri- 
butions from each successive period, and gaining 
something with every century which it adds to its 



ESSA YS. 127 

dateless life. The ages we have been considering 
have contributed their full share to this millennial 
growth; and, dark as they seem compared with 
our own, they record themselves as real and sub- 
stantial additions to humanity's increase. The 
final result of all these contributions — the great 
human product, the consummate fruit of history — 
may require for its full maturation and perfection 
as many ages, perhaps, as were needed to prepare 
the earth for the first of human kind. Geology 
traces the steps of that process through all its 
periods and formations, and shows how each suc- 
cessive revolution contributed its part, how each age 
deposited its layer and arranged the materials and 
adjusted the mixture, imtil the mountains were 
brought forth, the valleys scooped, the minerals 
baked, the loam matured, and the finished planet, 
with all its earths, ores, granite, slate, coal, iron, 
gold, was compounded and compacted, clothed with 
vegetation, and delivered up to its human occupant 
to subdue, replenish, and enjoy. So period-wise 
and complex, as witnessed by history, will be the 
composition and growth of historic man. Stratum 
upon stratum of knowledges and ideas the centu- 
ries will deposit in him. Revolution upon revolu- 
tion will compact his culture. One civilization 
after another will be absorbed in his blood. Indian 
and Egyptian myths, Hebrew faiths, Greek and 



128 



FEUDAL SOCIETY. 



Italian art and song, feudalism, chivalry, mediteval 
sanctities, will melt into the heart of him. What^ 
ever of promise and of blessing the travails of 
humanity have brought forth, whatever of en- 
during worth the accumulated labors of all gen- 
erations have compiled, what-ever the tempest and 
the calm of time have proved and perfected, will 
make up the funded wealth of his complex nature. 
And, 80 replenished and matured, he will come in 
his kingdom, a universal Man, with the wisdom of 
ail time for his intelligence, with the art of all 
time for his faculty, and the riches of all time for 
hJB estate. 



MMMMaaa 



CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 

AN ORATION DEUYERED BEFORE THE *. B. K. SOCIETT OF 
HARVARD COLLEQE AT THEIR FIRST MEETING AFTER 
THE CHANGE IN THEIR CONSTITUTION ENLARGING 
THE TERMS OF MEMBERSHIP. 

Gentlemen of the *. B. K. Society, — 

T T 7E are met for the first time under the new 
^ ^ and more liberal aspect which this associa- 
tion now wears. I congratulate you on the change 
in our Constitution and on the unanimity with 
which it has been adopted. If in yielding up 
something of that exclusiveness which heretofore 
characterized us we have seemed to compromise 
our ground-idea, the original import of this insti- 
tution, that compromise is not a forced capitula- 
tion to popular prejudice, but a free surrender to 
the genius of the age, before whose progress old 
limitations are fast disappearing, as the charmed 
circle which bounds our dreams dissolves with the 
morning sun. 

A good spirit prompts these concessions, which 
forestall by a wise policy the revolutions of time. 
It is well to greet the sun at his coming, to court 
the blessing of the morning with early vows. 

9 



180 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 

There comes a time when tiie Pait wM ghls 
account of itself to the Present, when existing eiis- 
toms and institutions must judge fheouelTeB or be 
judged. Whatsoever lacks ntalitj enough to ac- 
commodate itself to the new ideas VbtA rule the 
time is judged by those ideas and throat aside, M 
the new foliage judges and eztmdes the last jeBfn 
growth. 

Progress is the characteristic of modem Ohris- 
tian civilization, which herein, as Gnisot and otiiciB 
have shown us, is chiefly distinguished from Hbb 
fixed ideas of the Asian mind. Our culture is Ori- 
ental in its origin ; but who distinguishes the fea- 
tures of the parent in the fortunes of the child? 
We gaze upon the river as it hastens to the sea, 
city-skirted, traffic-swarming ; but who remembers 
the ^^ mountains old" in whose silent bosom that 
river had its rise? 

Eternal movement is the characteristic and des- 
tiny of the modem mind. Or shall we rather say, 
the movement is old like the earth's movement in 
space, and only the discovery of it new? The 
earth's movement in space, it is now believed, is 
not merely the ever-repeated cycle which consti- 
tutes the solar year, but a portion of some vaster 
orbit which is carrying us toward unknown firma- 
ments. Let us believe also that history is not 
merely periodical, but progressive. But the prog- 



lifti 



ESS A YS. 181 

resfl of society is never wholly a unanimous move- 
ment ; its judgment is never a unanimous verdict. 
Our motion in time, like motion in space, is sub- 
ject to a contrary power. All civilization is a con- 
flict of opposite forces. While Faith instinctively 
gravitates to the new, Fear, with eyes behind, as 
instinctively clings to the old. According as one 
or the other of these elemeuts predominates, the 
mind is drawn into one or the other of two oppo- 
site directions, — Conservatism, Reform. These 
two tendencies at present divide the world, — Con- 
servatism and Reform ; the old and the new. All 
forces, opinions, men, and things are enlisted in 
this conflict, arrange themselves around one or 
the other of these opposite poles. A word as to 
the scholar's place and function in this warfare 
has seemed to me the topic most apposite to the 
present occasion. 

In Germany and France, where letters consti- 
tute the first interest in the State next to the 
State itself, the learned are easily drawn to new 
views, and are usually reformers in their respec- 
tive spheres. In England, on the contrary, and 
in this country, where letters are subordinate to 
business and to property, the conservative influ- 
ence predominates, and the scholar is seldom quite 
abreast with his time. The superior ability dis- 
played in the Tory journals of Great Britain, com- 



182 CONSERVATISM AND BEFOBM. 

pared with those of the Libnal party* shows clearif 
to which side, in politics, at least, Ite literary tal- 
eut of that natioQ inclines. The same illastnttio& 
may not hold with us, yet is our own literature 
too deeply imbued with English inflaauoe not to 
exhibit essentially the same trait Strong attach- 
ment to existing fonna, and a oonaeqiimt distnut 
of all that wants the authority of age and iiuii^)eta, 
must be regarded as the olutfaoteriatao tttideocy 
of the educated classes in A\het ooonby. It ia 
impossible to say how mooh of tbii tendency, in 
our own case, may be owing to near contact wiUi 
an unlettered democracy which acts repulsively on 
the scholar, or how much, in either case, may be 
the natural growth of the English mind, — a form 
of intellect, in all periods, more conversant with 
&cts than with ideas. 

However this may be, let us honor whatever is 
praiseworthy in Conservatism, — its deference to 
authority, and its veneration for the Pott. Let us 
honor authority. Not that which another imposes, 
but that which ourselves create. We must not 
look upon authority as something incompatible 
with the rights and freedom of the individual 
mind, compelling assent to forms of belief which 
the nund, if left to itself, would never adopt. This 
view of the subject confounds the effect with the 
cause. It is not authority that usurps, but the 



^mtmt 



ESS A YS. 133 

slnggish, slavish mind that concedes such power. 
It is not the idol that makes the idolater, but the 
reverse. The power of authority is purely subjec- 
tive. Its character is our own. On ourselves it 
depends whether it shall be to us a law of liberfy 
or a law of restraint; a goad or a guide. With 
well-regulated minds it is the natural expression 
of a noble sentiment, the testimony of a reverent 
and grateful spirit to intellectual or moral power ; 
the confidence we feel in an individual or a sys- 
tem, founded on personal experience of their wis- 
dom and worth, — a conviction that what has 
approved itself in one particular is trustworthy 
in all, as the stamp of a well-known manufacturer 
guarantees the article so marked. 

No doubt this faith may sometimes mislead. 
We may carry our confidence too far. We may 
exaggerate the worth of a name, and do injustice 
to ourselves in our implicit reliance on another's 
thought. Still, the principle is one on which the 
majority of mankind have always acted, and will 
always act. The first glance at society shows us 
how little men are disposed to rely on themselves, 
and how, with the greater portion, authority seems 
to be a necessity of their nature. The common 
mind instinctively flies to some accredited source 
in quest of the light which it does not find in 
itself. The existence of oracles. Christian and 




184 CONSERVATISM AND SSFOSU. 

pagan, from ancient Dodona to modoni Borne,' 
attests thiB fact. Tboae oracles have ceased or 
are ceasing; but the faith in oracles is no wia% 
abated. There is no diGference here between Bad- 
ical and GonservatiTe. However they may differ 
in the authorities to whioh they appeal, hov- 
eyer the one may build on an andent cfanroh aad 
the other on a modem heresy, the need of anttuMr* 
ity is felt equally by both. Whether this ought 
so to be, we hare not now to decide. Ssch is tiis 
fact; all our civilization is built upon it. All 
civilization consists io a series of provisions to 
meet tliis want. The merit of CoDserratism is 
that it recognizes this want, and gives it its place 
among the facts of the soul. 

There is another view of this eubject. Authority 
is not only a guide to the blind, but a law to the 
seeing. It is not only a safe-conduct to those (and 
they constitute the larger portion of mankind) 
whose dormant sense has no intuitions of its own, 
hut we have also to consider it as affording the 
awakened but inconstant mind a security against 
itself, a centre of reference in the multitude of its 
own visions, in the conflict of its own volitions a 
centre of rest. Unbounded license is equally an 
evil and equally incompatible with true liberty, 
in thought as in action. In the one as in the other, 
liberty must bound and bind itself for its own pres- 



ESS A YS. 185 

enration and best effect; it must legalize and 
determine itself by self-imposed laws. Law and 
liberty are not adverse, but different sides of one 
fact. The deeper the law, the greater the liberty ; 
as organic life is at once more determinate and 
more free than unorganized matter, a plant than a 
stone, a bird than a plant. The intellectual life, 
like the physical, must bind itself in order that it 
may become effective and free. It must organize 
itself by means of fixed principles which shall pro- 
tect it equally against encroachment without and 
anarchy within. It is in vain that I have been 
emancipated from foreign oppression, while I am 
still the slave of my own wayward moods. We 
want not only liberty, but direction ; not movement 
only, but method. Our speculations have no abso- 
lute ground or evidence in themselves, but vary 
with the moods they reflect. To-day I am occupied 
with one set of opinions, to-morrow with another. 
Now my faith is equal to the most attenuated 
mysticism; anon first axioms will seem doubtful. 
Every thought justifies itself to the state which pro- 
duced it ; but thore is none which answers to all 
states. Who will insure me that the clearest con- 
victions of to-day shall abide the criticism of to- 
morrow ? Or where, in this heaving and shoreless 
chaos, shall I find the system and repose which my 
spirit craves ? It is precisely here that authority 



136 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM, 

comes in, not as a hostilo, but a voluntary power, — 
a fiat of tlie will like that which projected a uni- 
verse in space, an original determination in tba 
mind itself, a conatruclive principle around which 
speculation may gather and grow to an articulate 
faith, and the blind chaoa become an intelligible 
world. 

Such ia the vahte of authority to the individual 
in forming his individual faith. But we are to 
consider, farther, — what should never be forgottea 
in theae inquiries, — that man ia not an individual 
merely. He ia not complete in himself; like a 
single organ, an eye, a leaf, he ia perfect only in 
connection with the system to which be belongs. 
It was written of old, " It is not good for man to be 
alone ; " and therefore he was made many, and ap- 
pears, in the ancient -mythuty to hare first become 
conscious of his own nature when he saw himself 
reflected in a kindred form. Man is still many, 
and not one. He is not complete in himself, he is 
not intelligible in himself alone. Whether we con- 
sider him as animal or as spirit, society is the com- 
plement and solution of his individual nature. His 
relation to society is twofold. On the side of hia 
earthly nature he belongs to the State ; on the side 
of his intellectual he belongs to the Church. By 
Church is not meant the particular communions 
which are usually designated by that name, but the 



1 



ESSA YS. 137 

whole circle of ideas and influences within which 
the spiritual culture of an age or people is com- 
prised, as Islamism, Mosaism, Christianity. And 
when I say that man belongs to the Church, I do 
not mean that the individual may not in some cases 
feel himself more at home without it ; as in some 
cases he may please himself by withdrawing from 
the State and shutting himself out from all com- 
munion with his kind. But such cases are excep- 
tions. The rule is that the individual finds in 
Church, as in State, his most congenial sphere. 
Within this sphere, in the Church as in the State, 
authority is the regulative and even constitutive 
principle, without which no society could exist. 
But here, too, authority is not to be conceived as a 
hostile, compulsory force, but as a necessary re- 
ference in the uncertainty of clashing views and 
minds, as an appeal of the Spirit from itself to 
itself, from its lower instances to its higher, from 
its morbid states and wild wanderings, its incon- 
sistencies, doubts, and errors, to the standing mon- 
uments of its own inspiration, — old Tradition, 
and the written Word of those prophetic souls 
whom the Church reveres as " foremost of her true 
servants," 

" Among the enthroned Gods on sainted seats." 

This I take to have been the idea intended in the 
Catholic Church when that Church asserted its own 



188 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 

infallibility. It could not have meant to assert ab- 
solutely and unconditionally what the very fact of 
its deliberative councils disproved. The infallibil- 
ity assumed was only a more emphatic announce* 
ment of that authority by which every society 
provides for the final arbitrament of litigated ques- 
tions in its own sphere, and which the Catholic 
Church could claim, with peculiar propriety, on the 
allowed supposition of a Divine Spirit copresent to 
every period and phase of its development. The 
design was not to subject the mind, but to build it 
up ; not to enforce a particular scheme of faith, but 
to offer guidance and repose to darkling and weary 
souls. The Protestant eye detects the danger to 
individual liberty which lurks in this pretension, 
but not its deeper reason in the nature of a Church, 
nor its justification in the fact that every Protes- 
tant Church has, in substance, repeated the claim, 
with no greater modification than the temper of 
the times required. 

There is another element in Conservatism, inti- 
mately associated with its deference to authority, 
and equally entitled to respect. I mean its ven- 
eration for the Past. Veneration for the Past 
must not be confounded with that slavish attach- 
ment to ancient uses, into which, it must be 
confessed, the conservative spirit too easily degen- 
erates. Here, as elsewhere, a good principle is die- 



ESS A YS. 189 

bonored by excess, and here, as elsewhere, it is 
common to visit the excess on the principle itself. 
The true veneration for the Past consists in a vivid 
sense of what we owe to the Past, — a devout 
acknowledgment of the good amassed by the ages 
which preceded us, and the influence which they 
have on our own well being and doing. This ac- 
knowledgment is particularly incumbent on the 
scholar, for he, above all men, is most indebted to 
the Past. Him all the ages have conspired to 
mould and to train. His education comprises the 
flower of all time. How many minds have gone to 
educate that one ! What wealth of genius and of 
toil has been spent in rearing the harvest which he 
reaps! The legacies of nations compose his li- 
brary. The whole of civilization is condensed in 
his text-books. For him Athenian art and Roman 
virtue. For him the victors at Corinth and Olym- 
pia won their crowns. For him ancient Tragedy 
composed her fables. For him Herodotus observed, 
and Plato mused, and Cassar commented, and Cicero 
plead. His culture, — which who of us does not 
feel to be our better part, the life of our life, 
the whole astounding difference between the ripe 
scholar and the naked savage ? — what is it but the 
concentration in one individual of unnumbered 
minds? 

And not the scholar only, but the individual in 



140 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 

every walk of life, is the prodaot of all that bai 
transpired before his day. His ancestry oomprise 
the whole family of man. All ages and men unite 
in every influence which goes to form his (diaractor 
and to shape his destiny. He is bom into cerbun 
relations, traditions, opinions, institntions, all of 
which, if we trace their growth through all preoed- 
ing generations, will be found to involve the larger 
portion of the world's history in their formaticm 
and descent. To select one instance out of this 
complex mass, let us look at language, which 
affects so powerfully the character and life of civil- 
ized man. The individual is born to the use of a 
certain language, we will say the English. That 
language is compounded of how many races and 
climes ! It comes to us through how many chan- 
nels of Roman, Saxon, Norman history ! All the 
nations whose dialects have emptied into this vo- 
cabulary have imparted to it some peculiar trait. 
Had there never been a Hengist or a Caesar, there 
never could have been an English tongue. We 
cannot open our mouths without commemorating, 
in the very sounds we utter, events and names of 
distant renown. The household words which first 
strike our ear are echoes of another age and a 
pagan world. 

But this is not all. What more particularly 
concerns us in this connection is the fact that Ian- 



ESS A YS. 141 

guage is thought, fixed and crystallized in signs 
and sounds, conditioned by all the peculiarities, 
historical and organic, of the nation which uses it. 
The mind of a people imprints itself in its speech, 
as the light in a picture of Daguerre. The Eng- 
lish language is the English mind. We who use 
the language partake of this mind. Our individ- 
ual genius, be it never so individual, is informed by 
it, and can never wholly divest itself of its influ- 
ence. It may be doubted if the most abstract and 
original thinker, in his attempts to construct an 
absolute system of philosophy, can so abstract 
himself in his speculations, can reason so abso- 
lutely, but that the genius of his language shall ap- 
pear as a constituent element in his system. For 
the words he employs are not algebraic signs 
which every new speculator may employ at pleas- 
ure to express ever new relations. They are con- 
stant quantities ; they have a fixed value imparted 
to them by other minds, which he who employs 
them must accept, and which will go far to modify 
the results of his speculations. Hence the diffi- 
culty of expressing the poetry or the metaphysics 
of one nation in the language of another. The 
most successful efforts in this kind are but a com- 
promise between the native and the foreign mind. 

Again, the individual is born into some particu- 
lar church or form of faith, which, whether he 



142 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 

accepts it or not in after life, must needs exert a ' 
very important influence in tlio formation of bia 
mind. He is born, for example, into Christianity, 
— into a Protestant Ctiristian Church. Here, too, 
wo notice the same confluance of relations extend- 
ing through all regions and times. Besides tlie 
doctrine and tlie life of Jesus, how many systems 
and traditions, creeds and facts, have gone to malie 
or modify that Church ! Jewish theology, pagan 
philosophy, Romish councils, Ghibbellino factions, 
and Protestant reforms, — these influences again 
are connected with others, and still others, and so ' 
ou through a boundless conipleititj of cause and 
effect, reaching back to the Flood. 

Such is the iudividual ; so compounded and con- 
ditioned, he comes into life. He is the product of 
all the Past However he may renounce the con- 
nection, he is always the child of his time. He 
can never entirely shake off that relation. All 
the efforts made to outstrip time, to anticipate the 
natural growth of man by a violent disruption of 
old ties and a total separation from the Fast, have 
hitherto proved useless, or useful, if at all, in the 
way of caution rather than of fruit. The experi- 
ment has often been tried. Men of ardent temper 
and lively imagination, impatient of existing evils, 
— from which no period is exempt, — have re- 
nounced society, broken loose from all their moor- 



MUM 



ESSAYS. 148 

ings in the actual, and sought in the boundless sea 
of Dissent the promised land of Reform. They 
found what they carried, they carried what they 
were, they were what we all are, — the offspring of 
their time. 

The aeronaut who spurns the earth in his puffed 
balloon is still indebted to it for his impetus and 
his wings ; and still with his utmost efforts he 
cannot escape the sure attraction of the parent 
sphere. His floating island is a part of her main. 
He revolves with her orbit, he is sped by her 
winds. We who stand below and watch his mo- 
tions know that he is one of us. He may dally 
with the clouds awhile, but his home is not there. 
Earth he is, and to earth he must return. 

The most air-blown reformer cannot overcome 
the moral gravitation which connects him with his 
time. He owes to existing institutions the whole 
philosophy of his dissent, and draws from Church 
and State the very ideas by which he would fight 
against them or rise above them. The individual 
may withdraw from society, he may spurn at all 
the uses of civilized life, dash the golden cup of 
tradition from his lips, and flee to the wilderness 
** where the wild asses quench their thirst." He 
may find others who will accompany him in his 
flight; but let him not fancy that the course of 
reform will follow him there, that any permanent 



144 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 

organization can be based on dissent, tbat society 
will relinquish the hard conqueata of bo many 
jears, and return again to original nature, wipe 
out tbe old civilization, and with rata tcAula be^n 
the world anew. 

Man's progress is a natural, not a voluntary 
growth. A divine education is evolving in eternal 
procession the divine soul. The pupil of the ages, 
he proceeds in the fore-written order of events to 
recover his faded image and his lost estate. The 
true reformers are they who accept this divine 
order and humbly co-operate witli it, instead of 
seeking to originate one of their own; who sow, 
like JcBos, the kingdom of Ood in the midst of the 
kingdoms of the world, and trust to 

" Blossoming time, 
Which from seedness the bare fallow bringB 
To teeming f oison . ' ' 

There is no stand-point oat of society from which 
society can be reformed. " Give me where to stand," 
was the ancient postnlate. " Find where to stand " 
says modem Dissent. " Stand where you are," said 
Goethe, " and move the world." 

In this defence of Conservatism it has been my 
aim to discriminate, in the general confueion of 
faUe and true which accompanies that tendency, 
the two principles on which it may fairly ground 



iMMlH^toaMiMHMrtMl 



ESS A YS. 145 

a claim to the sympathy and support of educated 
men. I have endeavored to do full justice to a 
cause, whose real significance, there is reason to 
fear, is as little appreciated by the mass of those 
who espouse it as by those who oppose. But let 
Conservatism, on the other hand, do justice to 
Reform. 

In approaching this part of my subject I feel 
boimd to confess that the actual Conservatism 
of the present day is in the great majority of 
cases based on no such ground as that which I 
have indicated. It is with most men a mere preju- 
dice, which does not care to justify itself in its own 
eyes. Its advocates, so far from recognizing the 
ideas expressed in the various reformatory move- 
ments which are going on around them, will not 
even recognize those on which their own cause de- 
pends. Ideas of all kinds are distasteful to them. 
Their ritual palate abhors these Gentile meats. 
They relish no arguments but appeals to custom 
and to fear. Approach them with philosophical 
explanations of their own views, and their sour 
looks confess how much they loathe the bitter drug : 
et or a triatia tentantium sensu torquebit amaror; 
all philosophy is to them auapecty and has a 
guilty, revolutionary look. They see a traitor be- 
neath the stole. You are not for a moment to 
admit that their cause can require such support, as 

10 



146 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 

if tradition irere not BuflQcient for itself. Tou are 
expected to assume the whole burden of the Past on 
the simple credit of the Post. Take no counsel 
of modern discoveries. Once admit an argument 
based on the soul, and you betray the cause. It 
ia only substituting a ruse for an onset, aap for 
storm. All such weapons are forged by the ad- 
versary. " Wo are not ignorant of hia devices." 
The only safety is in planting yourself immovably 
on the letter, and availing yourself of aucb protec- 
tion OS property and numbers, popular prejudice 
and the fear of change, tho anathemas of the 
Chuj-oh and tho tavi-om ot tho law, have thi'own 
around you. fiut beware how you parley with 
Beason. Yon must not tamper with ideas. To 
speculate ia to surrender, to reason is to capita- 
late, to examine ia to yield. 

However practicable this method of maintaining 
orthodoxy may once have been, it ia not practicable 
now. The age of menace and high-toned defiance 
in matters of faith has set, never to rise again on 
this quarter of the globe. The order of the old 
world is reversed. Inquisition has gone over to 
the side of Freedom. Beason is the grand inqnia- 
itor in these latter days. Her high court of last 
appeal is holding a long assize on all human thinga. 
Erery opinion must come to that bar. The only 
policy for an enlightened Gonserratism, in this day 



1 



I 



ESS A YS. 147 

of judgment, is to confront Reason with Reason, — 
to show the philosopher that his philosophy is com- 
prehended and seen through by a philosophy older 
than his, and that beneath those inquiries which 
he deems so profound, deeper than Schelling 
sounded or Hegel drew, below the storm and the 
strife of the schools, there lies a region of perpet- 
ual calm, where rest the rock-foundations of Church 
and State, and where gushes in secret the ever- 
lasting fountain which he who drinketh shall thirst 
no more. 

Let the conservative do justice to Reform, and 
while he guards with priestly care the ancient 
sanctities of heart and life, let him cheerfully con- 
cede whatever of falsehood and corruption and 
obsolete value has gathered around them, where- 
by Truth, in the language of Lord Bolingbroke, is 
made to resemble *' those artificial beauties who 
hide their defects under dress and paint." Para 
minima est ipsa puella aui. To deny the existence 
of errors and the need of reform in Government 
and Religion, is only to repeat the folly and renew 
the evils of past centuries; it is only to provoke 
a violent disruption where timely concessions might 
heal the breach. Consider, too, what manner of 
men they are who engage in the work of Reform. 
Some of them, doubtless, men of depraved ambi- 
tion, whose only aim is to ride into power on the 



148 



CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 



top of some excitement into which they have lashed 
the public mind. But there are others of a diffeiv 
ent spirit, — men of rare virtue and austere lives, 

" Who I^ dne stops a^re 
To lay their just haDtle on the golilen key 
That opes the palace of et«mitj> ; " 

men who resint not evil, but encounter force with 
meekness, and oppose the breastplate of an indom- 
itable patience to gibes and sneers ; men who have 
learned to subdue and deny them sol vos, simple 
Irrers, who know neither flesh nor wine, and taste 
« no pleasant bread," but nourish their great soula 
with earnest faith and living hope. 

Think bow vain, in dealing with such, are men- 
ace and persecation and ail power but truth. Hen 
who can live on roots and ideas are not easily 
daunted or overcome. They may be counted upon 
as sure to effect something, provided they keep 
themselves sane. It is related of Benjamin Frank- 
lin that when opposed in some literary enterpiise, 
he invited his opponents to supper, and setting 
before them his usual coarse fare, bade them take 
notice that the man who could subsist on such diet 
was not to be put down. Such are the resources 
and qualifications which these reformers bring to 
their task. Grounded in principles and armed with 
ideas, by ideas and principles only can they be 



ESSA YS. 149 

overcome. Concede to them what is just, that yoa 
may the better resist their unjust demands, and 
imitate the conservative policy of physical science 
by guiding the heaven-bom fire which you cannot 
quench. The wild forces of ' Nature yield only to 
Nature's laws. 

Avoiding particular applications of this policy to 
the controverted questions of the day, let me speak 
of it generally, as it relates to men and to ideas. 

First, as it relates to men. There is no one 
point in which the moral difference between the 
Past and the Present is so conspicuous as it is in 
the growing respect for Humanity now manifest 
wherever the spirit of modem civilization is dis- 
tinctly heard. Every authentic movement of that 
spirit asserts, in ever more emphatic terms, the 
divine idea of human brotherhood, the worth of the 
individual, the identity of our common nature in 
all its guises, and the fundamental equality which 
exists under all the adventitious distinctions of 
social life. It is chiefly as the largest and most 
adequate expression yet given to these ideas that 
the form of government under which we live is 
entitled to our regard. It is as the champion of 
these ideas that the democratic element has ac- 
quired such prominence among us, and is even 
made attractive to some whose early associations 
point in a different direction. 




150 CON'SERVATISM AND REFORM. 

Seldom does it happen, however, tbat this at- 
traction ia felt to any considerable extent by the 
echolar, or that the ideas in qaesticMi obtain, inOt 
the educated men of our conntiy, that practacal ae- 
knovledgment which they deaerre. The achcdar if 
apt to stand aloof from the people, aa i^ in col- 
tirating the " humanities," he bad laid his own 
humanity aside ; not considering that the popular 
interest is made his peculiar trust by those very 
advaotages on which his excIiuuTeness is based. 

It is not necessary, nor is it desirable, that the 
scholar should become a demagogoe, that he 
should "give up to party what was meant for man- 
kind," that he should *' so completely vanquish 
all the mean superstitions of the heart" as to sully 
himself with the vile details of electioneering cam- 
paigns ; least of all that they who have been called 
to be " fishers of men," in the high, apostolic sense 
of that calling, should quit their proper sphere to 
cast secular nets in the muddy waters of political 
intrigue. Vain were our colleges if such the des- 
tination of those whom they train. It needs no 
learned institutions to institute men in arts like 
these, where the graduate of the bar-room shall 
render ridiculous the diplomas of Harvard or Yale. 

But it ia necessary to his own growth and influ- 
ence that the scholar should honor Humanity, and 
greet it frankly in whatsoever guise; that he 



■H 



ESS A YS. 151 

Bhould respect his own likeness in the common 
mind, and in every debasement of conventional 
life meet his brother man without reserve, in the 
name of that common image and the sympathy of 
that one blooif which binds and equals all. It 
is desirable that the American scholar should 
practically acknowledge those ideas and institu- 
tions whose contemporary and subject it is his 
privilege to be; that he should not falsify his 
nativity by affecting to despise the peculiar bless- 
ings it confers. He must not coquet, in imagina- 
tion, with the dowered and titled institutions of 
the Old World, and feel it a mischance which has 
matched him with a portionless Republic. Let 
him rather esteem it a privilege to be so con- 
nected, and glory in the popular character of his 
own Government as a genuine fruit of human 
progress, and the nearest approximation yet made 
to that divine right which all Governments claim. 
Let him not think it shame to be with and of the 
people in every genuine impulse of the popular 
mind, not suffering the scholar to extinguish the 
citizen, but remembering that the citizen is before 
the scholar, the elder and higher category of the 
two. He shall find himself to have gained intel- 
lectually, as well as socially, by free and frequent 
intercourse with the people, whose instincts, in 
many things, anticipate his reflective wisdom, and 



152 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 

in whose unconscious movements a fsjst ia oAm 
forefelt before it is seen by reason ; as the physi- 
cal changes of our globe are lelt by ihe lower 
animals before they appear to man. Let tiie 
scholar of every profession tibinE that he does 
injustice to that profession, and still greater i&jna* 
tice to his own manhood, whenever he chenshea 
any habit of thought or feding which tends ta 
seclude him from the people, when he relucts to 
mingle with them on equal terms as man with 
man, or when, in any division between tilie moneyed 
and the popular interest, he attaches himself ex- 
clusively to the former. However he may avoid 
them, they will not avoid him. He may shun their 
fellowship, but he cannot escape their control. 
As a citizen he is their equal, as a functionary 
he is their servant. On all sides he is amenable 
to their judgment. On all sides they exercise a 
jurisdiction over him which it is vain to resist and 
impossible to escape. The only way to secure a 
favorable verdict is to form one of the council. 
It is the worst of all policies to cherish exclusive 
feelings where it is impossible to lead an exclusive 
life. The odi profanum vulguSy always an un- 
worthy sentiment, becomes ridiculous where the 
arceo is impracticable. 

The same liberality which an enlightened policy 
demands of the scholar in relation to men, let him 



ESS A YS. 158 

exhibit also in relation to ideas and the progress of 
inquiry on all topics connected with the spiritual 
nature and destination of man. A certain reserve 
in relation to new views may be justly expected of 
him in proportion as his own views are based on 
personal investigation. The pains bestowed on his 
inquiries have made him tenacious of their results, 
as men love money the more, the greater the labor 
expended in its acquisition. It is only when this re- 
serve degenerates into peevish intolerance or fierce 
denunciation, when it assumes to decide ques- 
tions of a purely speculative character on practical 
grounds, that it ceases to be philosophical or par- 
donable or safe. Nothing is more natural than 
that men who have contributed something in their 
day to illustrate or extend the path of discovery in 
any direction should cling with avidity to those 
conclusions which they have established for them- 
selves, and which represent the natural boundaries 
of their own mind, — "the butt and sea-mark of 
its utmost sail ; " nothing more natural than that 
they, for their part, should feel a disinclination 
to farther inquiry. But it ill becomes them to deny 
the possibility of farther discovery, to maintain 
that they have found the bottom of the well where 
Truth lies hid because they have reached the limits 
of their own specific gravity. One sees at once 
that in some branches of inquiry this position is 



164 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 

not only untenable, but the Teij ewmeiaJaon af it 
absurd. It would require Bometbing more &AI1 tiie 
authority of Herschel to make ns believe tbit ore** 
tion stops with the limits of his forfy-leet lefiector. 
Nor would the assertion of Sir Humphry Davy be 
sufficient to convince us that all fbe pro|>ertie8 of 
matter have been catalogued in hia report By 
what statute of limitations are we forbidden to in- 
dulge the same hope of indefinite progress in every 
other direction, which remains to us in these? 

Besides, our opposition to new views must not 
overlook that the course of human thought, on tfaa 
controverted subjects of philosophy and religion, ia 
not a voluntary movement. The prevalence of 
certain views at certain periods does not depend 
on the caprice of those who adopt them. Ideas 
are not maggots of the brain generated at pleas- 
ure, nor must we suppose that a system of philos- 
ophy gains currency in the world because certain 
individuals who choose to think thus, have ut it in 
motion. These things are ordered by a higher 
Power. Ideas do not spring from the ground. 
They are not manufactured, but given. Man is 
not their author, but their organ. No one who 
traces with philosophic eye the progress of opin- 
ions through successive ages can fail to perceive a 
causal relation between each epoch and the opin- 
ions it represents. He will see the presence of 



ESSAYS. 155 

law in the intellectual creation as in the material. 
The history of the human mind, like all the pro- 
cesses of planetary life, has its appointed method, 
and is from beginning to end a scries of evolu- 
tions, in which every phase is connected by neces- 
sary sequence with every other phase, and the 
first movement contains the last. 

*' Omnia certo tramite vadant 
Frimusque dies dedit extremum." 

It does not follow, however, that because certain 
opinions characterize certain epochs, the individual 
has no choice of opinions, but must necessarily 
accept those which belong to his time. The 
general movement does not preclude individual 
liberty, but includes it, as all the motions on the 
earth's surface are included in the earth's orbit. 
Nor are we justified in supposing that a system of 
philosophy is necessarily true because a divine 
order in human affairs has connected the ideas 
embodied in it with the period in which they ap- 
pear. The inference is rather that no philosophy 
is absolutely true, and none entirely false. They 
are all but so many factors in that process by 
which truth is continually approximated, and never 
reached. They alternate one with another, now 
the sensual, and now the spiritual, as one or the 
other element in our complex nature requires. 



156 CONSERVATISM AND REFORM. 

For the intellectual maa, like the phyBioal, can ad- 
vance only by putting one foot before the other. 

It is from this point of view that we are to judge 
of the trartscendental philo9ophy (bo called), on 
which the mind of this century divideSy and which, 
though very different yiewB are included in that 
name, may in some sort be regarded as one system. 
Regarding it in this light, we shall find it to be 
neither so glorious nor so yile an apparition as one 
side and the other would make it. It la not the 
*^ pure spirit of health" which its advocates suppose, 
nor yet the ^^ goblin damned" with the dread of 
which its adversaries have so needlessly afflicted 
their souls. It is not destined to supersede other 
systems, but it is destined to take an equal rank by 
their side. Sotting aside its method and its critique, 
which constitute its real merit, it has produced 
nothing as yet which after ages can quote as dis* 
covery ; but these may be regarded as an actual ad- 
vance on ages past. As a science of the Absolute it 
has failed to redeem its high promise, and to place 
itself on a footing of equality, in point of demon- 
stration, with the exact sciences. In the enun- 
ciation of its doctrines, its disciples are liable to 
the charge of not having sufficiently regarded the 
wholesome precept of the ancient rhetorician, tan* 
quam scoptUum vites insolena verlum. But with 
all its faults It will be foimd, in the final judgment. 



ESSAYS. 157 

to have answered, in its degree, the tme purpose 
of metaphysical inquiry, in furnishing a new im- 
pulse to thought, and enlarging, somewhat, the 
horizon of life. If Utility object that its sphere 
lies too remote from earth, let Utility consider it 
as an observation of the heavens by which the 
wanderer here below is enabled to shape more 
correctly his terrestrial course. 

The real or supposed hostility between the prom- 
inent conceptions of this philosophy and the Chris- 
tian religion has given it an interest in the minds 
of some which its own merits would not have pro- 
cured for it. It is on this ground that war is 
waged against new views by conservative minds. 
Were it possible, in the nature of man, that re- 
ligion could ever cease from the earth, or that any 
particular form of it could cease, so long as it 
satisfies a real want of the soul, then the posture 
of philosophy at this time, as in all time, and 
not more than in all time, might seem to justify 
the apprehensions it has caused. We may derive 
great encouragement, however, from the fact that 
these fears and fightings are not new. All phi-' 
losophies have encountered the same. When Mr. 
Locke published his ^^ Essay on the Human Under- 
standing," which the more cautious among us 
are now disposed to regard as the only safe phi- 
losophy, it was impugned, on precisely the same 



158 CONSERVATISM AND RSFORM, 

ground, hj the wise and pious men of Oak ditf ; 
and we are told that the Heads of tiie sereiml 
Houses in the University of Oxford, at a spedsl 
meeting called for that purpose, resolyed, if pOsiA* 
ble, to prevent its being read in their respoetiiFe 
colleges. All philosophy which does not assume 
revelation for its basis will be deemed hostile io 
revelation by some. Meanwhile Religion and Phi- 
losophy have each their separate patii, and the 
gradual progress of human culture can alone me- 
diate between the two. May we not suppose a 
threefold development of religion, corresponding 
with three successive stages of the individual 
mind, — sense, sentiment, and reason ? A religion 
addressed to sense we have in the forms and 
ceremonies of the Catholic Church. A religion 
addressed to sentiment we have in the vehement 
emotions of the Protestant sects. May we not 
expect, as the complement of these two, a third 
epoch, — a religion addressed to Reason, a relig- 
ion of ideas? Assuredly Christianity contains 
within itself the elements of such a church. 

On the whole, we may leave these sacred con- 
cerns where they have been left by their Guardian 
and ours. We may trust to Heaven to protect its 
own, without laying our rash hands upon the ark. 

Nor need the educated dread, on account of 
others, a tendency which they feel to be innoxious 



ESS A YS. 159 

as it respects themselves. There is too much of 
this groundless apprehension, this superfluous and 
officious concern in behalf of the popular faith, 
and too little confidence in the native instincts and 
clear judgment of the conmion mind. There is a 
class of men among us who seem to possess an 
organic alacrity tn scenting out what is noxious in 
the opinions of their neighbors, and in raising the 
alarm whenever anything is uttered that does not 
square with the old standards, — as if, in emula- 
tion of those conservative birds in Roman history 
which once saved the Capitol, they supposed the 
welfare of the Church to depend on their timely 
cackling. Neither the views in question nor the 
apprehensions respecting them, neither the heresy 
on the one side nor the consternation on the 
other, are shared to any considerable extent by the 
people at large, who for the most part are too 
much occupied with their own practical concerns 
to trouble themselves with either. " Because half 
a dozen grasshoppers under a fern," said Burke 
in relation to certain contemporary speculations, 
^^ because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern 
make the field ring with their importunate chink, 
while thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath 
the shade, chew the cud and are silent, do not im- 
agine that those who make the noise are the only 
inhabitants of the field, that they are of course 



160 CONSER VA TISM AND BEFORM. 

many in number, or that after all Hiegr an Mmr 
than the little, shrivelled, meagre, hoj^ing, Hm^jbi 
loud and troublesome, insects of the hour.'' 

Let this too have its weif^t, tlial; no STStem or 
tendency or speculation is rightly disoemed or 
fairly judged when seen in conflict with opposite 
views. Every philosophy which springs np in am 
earnest soul, which is bom of faith and uttered ki 
love, will be found instructive to liiose who view Ik 
in its own light, and innoxious when received ia 
its own spirit. But when, nrged with harsh ooe^ 
tradiction, it is thrown into a hostile attitude and 
becomes polemic, its whole character is changed* 
Every good trait is suppressed, every doubtful trait 
is more pronounced. What was radical, becomes 
blasphemous; what was mystical, absurd. Every 
man's word should be stated without reference to 
opposite views, and heard without contradiction, in 
order to produce its full effect. 

** The current that with gentle mormur glides, 
. . . being stopped, impatiently doth rage ; 
But when his fair coarse is not hindered, 
He makes sweet music with the enamel'd stones, 
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge 
He overtaketh in his pilgrimage. 
And so by many winding nooks he strays 
With willing sport to the wild ocean." 

Whatever conclusions speculative philosophy, in 
the ebb and flow of its own unstable element, may 



ESSAYS. 161 

adyance or overthrow, on the terra firma of prac- 
tical wisdom there is one conclusion which will 
always stand fast, one fact which all reason and 
all experience conspire to enforce; that is, the 
inexpediency of opposing the tendency of thought, 
in an individual or a nation, with visible antago- 
nism and direct contradiction. As far as the 
individual is concerned, such opposition is as un- 
reasonable in point of justice as it is inexpedient in 
point of policy. If a man is earnest in his think- 
ing, if he is serious in his convictions, his thoughts 
— aye, and the expression of them — are as much 
a part of him as the form or features of his physical 
man. You might as well quarrel with your neighbor's 
nose and expect him to suppress it for your sake, 
as expect him to change or disguise his opinions 
because they are an offence in your eyes. 

But is there then no appeal from noxious senti« 
ments? Is there no remedy against dangerous 
heresies ? The remedy and the appeal lie in stat- 
ing your own convictions, with all the ability you 
can conmiand, whenever and wherever you can find 
voice and ear. But state them without reference 
to others. Publish your opinions, but not your 
dissent ; and take no notice of opposite views, but 
simply and steadily ignore them. Controversy on 
any subject is seldom productive of much profit; 
but to controvert abstractions, to oppose speculative 

11 




162 CONSERVATISti AND RBFORU. 

philosophy on practical groands. Is to ontdo tte 
hero of La Mancha, — it is tiltiiig, not vitli vind- 
mills, but with the wind. 

It was a principle with Ooetbe, and one unong 
the many proofs which that great genina gave of 
bis practical wisdom, to aroid oontrtdiotia% to 
deal as little as possible in negations, to state hi* 
view as if the opposite had nerer been stated, to 
work out his own problems in his own waj, and let 
the world take its conrse. In Ihe midst irf ood- 
flicts, civil and religious, which agitated his tune, 
with the din of battle always in his ear, he main- 
tained a stnct neutrality, and held in silence his 
steady conrse, well knowing that these controver- 
sies would decide themselycs, and that for him to 
take part in the fray was only to postpone their 
decision. He felt that to prodnce somewhat of his 
own was better than to quarrel with the work of 
others; that to plant for the future was better 
than to war with the past. So he trode the fieroe 
battle-field of his age with the implements of peace 
in his hands, and sowed philosophy and art in the 
upturned sod. 

Peace, and not controversy, is the true and 
genial element of the scholar'B life. The Goddess 
of Wisdom was sometimes represented with the 
EBgis and the lance ; but the olive was the emblem 
assigned her by her &Tored votaries in later times. 



iJftHtoirtMi*! 



ESSAYS. 168 

In the conflict between the old and the new which 
is raging around him, let the scholar attach him* 
self wherever instinct may draw or conscience 
drive, happy if he can find a point of reconciliation 
common to both, and minister as mediator between 
the two. Having found his own position, let him 
gladly concede to others the like freedom, and 
rejoice that there is wisdom enough on both sides 
to do justice to both. However the controverted 
question may divide itself to the intellect, let no 
division be recognized by the heart. Let no tech- 
nicalities stand between us and our brother's soul. 
Let no mean prejudice, no paltry apprehension 
baffle our serene intuition or mar the full and free 
enjoyment of whatever is quickening in our broth- 
er's word. Wherever in the many-mansioned 
house of philosophy or religion the understanding 
may lodge, let the affections be everywhere at 
home. The understanding is essentially protes- 
tant, — always defining, dividing, exclusive; but 
Love should be catholic as Nature and Life. 



REV. WILLIAM E. OHANNINO, D.D,, 

ON OCCASION or THl CELEBRATION Of THE TWERTUDIH liaZ- 

VBBSAET or HIS HEATH. 

WE are following the uBage of tiie andents in 
commemorating the anniyersaiy of our pro- 
phet's death. The modem custom has been to oele* 
brate the birthdays of distinguished men, but the 
ancients celebrated their death; and what is re* 
markable, considering the imperfect yiews of a fu- 
ture existence which we ascribe to them, they called 
the death-day the birth-day, — dies natalia; for they 
held that it was the birth of the soul into nobler 
fellowships and a freer life. And certainly, if to 
any who have passed away within our remembrance 
decease from this earthly world has been a heavenly 
birth, in commemorating the death of Channing we 
are celebrating a great nativity. Who in our re- 
membrance needed less of transformation in order 
to translation ? He had as little to put off, in put- 
ting on immortality, as any of the old pillar-saints 
or mediaeval devotees who tried to wean themselves 
into glory by refusing the breast of Mother Earth, 
— the homely nurse, who, as Wordsworth says, 
does all she can — 



iM 



ESSAYS. 165 

'' To make her foster-child, her inmate man, 
Forget the glories he hath known, 
And that imperial palace whence he came." 

Not that there was in him anything of the ascetic, 
anything of that morbid spirit which looks npon 
the body as a house of penance, and embraces, in 
one trinity of damnation, ^^the world, the flesh, and 
the devil." His view of life was healthy, genial ; 
his habit cheerful, joyous even, so far as physical 
debility permitted joyousness. He differed from 
the rest of us not so much in severity of practice 
as in spirituality of mind. In that, he had no equal 
among all the men whom I have known. And that 
I conceive to be the characteristic thing in Chan- 
ning, — spirituality; living in the contemplation 
and pursuit of the highest ; the habit of viewing 
all things in reference to the supreme good. All 
questions, movements, institutions, enterprises, all 
discoveries and inventions, he judged by this stan- 
dard. Their spiritual bearing was the measure of 
the interest he felt in them. Even matters of 
science — and he loved to read and hear of science 
— interested him only as they served to illustrate 
the goodness of God, or as he saw in them an open- 
ing into a better life for man. His intellectual 
orbit had two foci, around which it forever re- 
volved, — the goodness of God, and the dignity 
of man. How to make the true nature of God 



166 REV. WILLIAM E. CHANNINQ, D.D. 

believed against the distortions of a false theology ; 
how make men conscious of their divine image and 
calling, and anxious to realize it, — this was the 
one perpetual quest of that steady-burning, never- 
flaring, always-flaming, adoring spirit. In this 
spirituality lay the secret of his strength, and 
especially of that overwhelming personality which 
pervades all his speech, so that you can nowhere 
separate between the word and the man. By virtue 
of this he spoke to us, and we listened to him as 
one having authority. And curious it was how this 
man — without learning, without research, not a 
scholar, not a critic, without imagination or fancy, 
not a poet, not a word-painter, without humor or 
wit, without profundity of thought, without grace 
of elocution — could, from the spiritual height on 
which he stood, by mere dint of gravity (coming 
from such an elevation), send his word into the 
soul with more searching force than all the orators 
of his time. I said, "by mere dint of gravity ;" but 
his speech had another quality which made it ef- 
fective. That was a singular perspicuity, the re- 
sult of a rare combination of calm and intense. 
Nothing is so eloquent, addressed to the intellect, 
as luminous statement ; nothing addressed to the 
sentiments so eloquent as intense conviction. 
Channing had both, by reason of that singleness of 
mind which begets both. When the thought, which 



. ESS A YS. 167 

is the eye, is single, the whole speech, which is the 
body, is full of light. In conversing with the writ- 
ings of Channing, we move in a worid of exceeding 
day. There are no dark corners in his thought, no 
cloud-shadows on his discourse, no chiaroscuroj no 
twilight mysteries; it is all clear sky, and broad, 
effulgent noon, — owing in part, it must be con- 
fessed, to the singular want, in so distinguished an 
intellect, of all speculative proclivity, and conse- 
quently of all metaphysical scruples. He saw no 
difficulties, or none of the deeper difficulties, which 
perplex metaphysical minds. The imaginary objec- 
tions which he considers, the imaginary opponents 
against whom he argues in his essays, are all of 
the most superficial kind. His lofty Theism, which 
lies at the basis of all his teaching, was assumed 
apparently without question. His Christology, his 
doctrine of Christ, so edifying on the moral side, is 
loose on the critical. A scientific theologian he 
certainly was not, not a profound thinker; but, 
what is vastly more important, a very clear thinker 
and a wonderfully luminous writer. The critic 
and metaphysician may be disappointed in his 
writings, but they find an unfailing response and 
abundant justification in the conmion-sense of 
mankind. 

Side by side with the spirituality so characteristic 
of Channing I place his scarcely less characteristic 



168 REV. WILLIAM E. CHANNINQ, J>.D. 

honesty. The action of this quality in priTato 
made conversation with him, to a yoong man eape- 
cialljy somewhat embarrassing. Yon missed those 
smooth insincerities which hide or soften milder 
disagreements and facilitate colloquial inteiocmrse. 
You made jour statement : if he accepted it, it was 
well ; he was sure to furnish, from the riches of his 
mental experience, some apt comment, illustration, 
or application. If he rejected it, it was equaUjr 
well ; there was then opportunity and scope for 
friendly debate. But the chances were that he 
would neither accept nor reject, but receive it with 
dumb gravity, turning upon you that calm, clear eye, 
and annoying you with an awkward sense of frus- 
tration, — as when one offers to shake hands, and 
no hand is given him in return. But, as speaker 
and writer, this honesty established for Channing a 
peculiar claim, through the confidence it inspired, 
that the unadulterated sense of the man was in his 
speech. He might not see very far in some direc- 
tions ; but he saw with unclouded eye, and reported 
only what he saw. His judgment took no bribes. 
That is what can be said of very few of the writers 
or speakers of our time, I fear, or of any time. In 
theology, at least, I know very few whose judgment 
does not seem to be vitiated, corrupted, by one or 
another influence, from within or from without, by 
position or passion. Some are warped by sectarian 



ESS A YS. 169 

bias, some by worldly interest, some by fear of 
public opinion or of loosing the bands of authority ; 
and a great many more by lust of distinction, by 
jealousy of ecclesiastical domination, by impatience 
of traditional beliofs which they want the power to 
comprehend. Conservatives are bribed by the love 
of stability; radicals are bribed by the lure of 
novelty and the charm of defiance. Channing was 
unbribable. He had no interest to serve, aside of 
the truth ; no crotchet of the brain to pamper or 
defend. He was neither conservative nor radical, 
but a simple child of the light, bringing to the truth 
no prism, but a mirror, and giving back, without 
color or shade, the illumination he received. This 
honesty declares itself in his style. What a re- 
markable style it was! No purer English has 
been written in our day. So colorless, and yet so 
impressive, so natural, yet so exact. He never 
courted attention by the turn of a sentence or trick 
of words ; he used no flavors ; he practised no dis- 
tortions to make truisms pass for more than they 
were worth. If his thought was commonplace, he 
said it in a commonplace way. He never tried to 
disguise it by a pert and perky way of putting 
it, by smart phraseology or inverted syntax ; if his 
thought was weighty, its simple weight sufficed, 
and a perfectly colorless style sufficed for its pres- 
entation. He never aims to be smart, he never 



170 REV, WILLIAM E. CHANNINQ, D.D. 

aims to be quaint, but just walks through his pages 
with a sober, steady, dignified gait, and never capen 
and never struts. 

His faith in humanity was another characteristio 
trait. He cherished an immense hope for the race. 
He believed in liberty; he glowed for it; if need 
were, I think he would have died for it. A charac- 
teristic anecdote was told of him, that in the year 
1830, when the tidings came of the revolution in 
Paris which dethroned Charles the Tenth, he hur- 
ried from Newport to Boston to exchange congratu- 
lations with his friends on the subject, but found 
them unexpectedly cold and unsympathiziug. He 
could not understand it. Meeting one of them, he 
said, "Are you, too, so old and so wise as to feel 
no enthusiasm for the heroes of the Polytechnic 
School ? " " Ah ! " replied his friend, " you are 
the youngest man I have met with." "Yes," said 
Channing, " always young for liberty." 

What — now that twenty-five years have rolled 
over his grave — what is the present and what is 
to be the final significance of Channing ? In the 
world of letters, in the world of scientific theology, 
not so great as that of many of his contemporaries; 
in the world of ideas and ideal characters, a most 
weighty name and a sempiternal power. Of all the 
men of modern time, he stands for spiritual free- 
dom. Although not an iconoclast, not a denier, 



ESS A YS. 171 

but eminently an affirmative spirit, he represents 
the emancipation of the mind from all unrighteous 
thrall. His theology was never popular, and I sup- 
pose it never will be. What Renan says of it is 
probably true : " It demands too great intellectual 
sacrifices for the critic, and too little for those with 
whom it is a necessity to believe." But the final 
judgment of posterity will know how to separate 
between the creed and the man, as it does in the 
case of Saint Augustine and of F^nelon. The creed 
is costume, the spirit is the man. No man by acci- 
dent wins enduring fame. Circumstances, popular 
illusion, may confer a transient and local repute ; 
but the heroes who outlive the applause of their 
day, the heroes whom posterity accepts, whom the 
wise of other lands install in their Valhalla, have a 
right to their pedestals. Hear the judgment of one 
of the most learned, acute, and Christian scholars 
of this century concerning Channing, pronounced 
many years after his death. The late Baron Bun- 
sen, in a work entitled " God in History," selects 
from the Protestant Church five worthies who 
stand pre-eminent, in his judgment, as represen- 
tatives of the Divine presence in man, — Luther, 
Calvin, Jacob Bohme, Schleiermacher, Channing. 
And this is what he says of Channing: ^^In human- 
ity a Greek, in citizenship a Roman, in Christianity 
an apostle. ... If such a man, whose way of life. 



MM 



172 REV. WILLIAM E. CHANNINO, D.D. 

in the face of his feUow-citizbnB, corresponded to 
the Christian earnestness of his words and present! 
a blameless record, — if such a one is not a Ohris- 
tian apostle of the presence of God in man, I know 
of none." 



SCIENCE AND FAITH. 

ADDRISS AT THE CELEBRATION Of THE flF T lE T H ANNIVSBSABT 
or THE AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION. 

Ti/TR. PRESIDENT,— The fiftieth anniversary 
of this Association suggests, perforce, a 
comparison of the ecclesiastical outlook of to-day 
with the aspects and auspices of fifty years ago. 
And here the thing which first strikes me is a 
change in the topics arid points of view which 
occupy the leading minds not only of our own 
but of other communions. The questions which 
interested our fathers in 1825 have lost, in a great 
measure, their interest for us. The topics then 
debated with so much heart and heat, Triunity 
of the Godhead, Vicarious Atonement, Original 
Sin, Eternal Damnation, have almost dropped out 
of sight. The lines of theological separation be- 
tween ourselves and other Protestant sects, once 
80 rigidly maintained, are getting lax, are wa- 
vering, fading, vanishing. The Protestant sects 
are less concerned to define their position one 
toward another than to vindicate their common 
Christian heritage against a common enemy. Pro- 
testant Christendom itself is assailed, and that on 



174 SCIENCE AND FAITH. 

both sides, behind and before. Protestant Chris- 
tendom finds itself wedged between two hostile 
powers, of which our fathers made little account, 
but which in our day have acquired a portentous 
significance, — the Church of Rome on the one 
hand, and scientific scepticism on the other. The 
most pressing question between us and the Church 
of Rome is not a theological one, but a question 
of liberty or bondage, of progress or stagnation^ of 
intellectual life or death. The question between 
us and science is one of religion or no reli^on ; 
of possible commerce with the unseen, or confine- 
ment within the bounds of sensible experience, — 
spiritual life or death. The little I have to say 
connects itself with the latter question, — the re- 
lation between faith and science. 

The half century whose expiration we commem- 
orate has been, as you all know, a period of un- 
exampled progress in scientific discoveries and 
inventions. Four of the most memorable of these 
are comprised in its limits, — communication by 
electric telegraph (which my friend who has just 
taken his seat so eloquently characterized), pho- 
tography, anaesthetic surgery, and spectral anal- 
ysis, assuring the physical unity of creation. In 
consequence partly of these splendid achievements, 
and partly from other causes, Science in our day 
has assumed toward Theology a tone of conscious 



ESSAYS. 175 

Bnperiority, as if she were the world's leader, the 
light of life, the mainstay of civilization, and The- 
ology an anachronism, a ghost of other days, at 
best an off-interest, belonging, as Mr. Tyndall says, 
to the region of the emotions, outside of the do- 
main of knowledge, and entitled to no voice in the 
forum of the understanding. Well, it must be con- 
ceded that Theology no longer occupies the place 
she did in ages past, when she gave the law to 
secular beliefs as well as spiritual. Science has 
overruled her dictum on many questions of space 
and time. Astronomy has opened a world above, 
and geology a world below, before whose revela- 
tions Biblical statements of cosmogony and chro- 
nology have fled like dreams of the night. But the 
realm of Theology, although restricted by Science 
in certain directions, is not dissolved. Within 
her own realm she is still supreme ; and when 
Science invades that realm with her theories, she 
proves herself as incompetent, as much out of 
place, as Theology does when she dogmatizes 
about the order of creation and the genesis of 
brute and plant. 

What, on the whole, are the grounds on which 
Science vaunts, as against Theology, her superior 
claims ? Mainly, I think, these two, — greater cer- 
tainty, and greater utility. Will they stand the 
test of ultimate reason ? Science boasts, in com- 



176 SCIENCE AND FAITH. 

parison with Theology, the advantage of greater 
certainty, as dealing with realities ; while Theology, 
in her judgment, gropes in the dark, and is ^^ mov- 
ing about in worlds not realized." Now, the tmth 
of that claim must depend on our definition of 
^^ certainty." Consult your dictionaries, and yon 
will find that ^^ certainty" means, for one thing, 
^^ freedom from doubt." If we accept that defini- 
tion, the claim is void ; for, not to speak of the un- 
certainties, the notorious uncertainties, of Science, 
the moment she ventures beyond the region of 
sight and touch, not to speak of the wavering 
views of scientific men on grave questions, such 
as the nebular hypothesis, the atomic theory, the 
origin of species, — not to speak of these, the 
assurance of faith in the religionist is just as 
strong as the assurance of demonstration in the 
scientist. The devout Roman Catholic whom I 
met in Cologne was just as sure that certain 
bones preserved in the "Dom" of that city were 
the bones of the three wise men of the East, — 
Caspar, Mclchior, and Balthasar, — as the chemist 
is that water is composed of two parts hydrogen 
to one part oxygen. My friend the ghost-seer is 
just as sure that he has interviewed the shade of 
his deceased wife as the mathematician is that a 
body acted upon by two forces at right angles 
with each other will describe a diagonal between 



ma 



ESSAYS. 177 

the two. Now, it avails not to say that in the 
one case we have facts, established facts, and in 
the other only beliefs. To the common man, the 
unlearned, who cannot verify the facts, they are 
but beliefs after all, received on authority, resting 
on human testimony; while to the believer, on 
the other hand, his beliefs are facts. The cer- 
tainty in either case is the same. I do not say 
there is no difference in the kind of certainty, but 
I do say there is no difference in the degree ; and 
I say, moreover, that the faith of the religionist 
furnishes as sure a ground to build upon in spirit- 
ual things as the knowledge of the scientist does 
in material things. Science no more than religion 
can claim to build on reality. For what is reality ? 
Who will define it ? Who will prove it ? Do not 
all proofs refer us at last to subjective tests? 

Sensible experience is no more a proof of reality 
than spiritual experience. The scientist builds on 
sensible experience. He claims for that experi- 
ence an answering reality ; he supposes a world 
external to himself, corresponding to his ^n- 
sations. But the existence of such a world is 
a mere hypothesis. Profoundest thinkers have 
called it a vulgar prejudice, — a prejudice with 
which I confess I am somewhat infected. But 
when we come to demonstration, there is abso- 
lutely none. A convenient working theory for 

12 



178 SCIENCE AND FAITH. 

scientific and daily use : that is the best we can 
say of it. The religionist boilds on spiritoal 
experience. He claims for that experience an 
answering reality ; he supposes a Gk)d external to 
himself, as well as internal, — an intelligent Will 
over all, corresponding with the voice in his soul. 
Such a being is not demonstrable in a scientific 
sense. There is no mathematical demonstration 
of it ; but surely we can say of it, and the least 
we can say of it is, that it is a good working 
theory for spiritual uses, — those uses without 
which man, with all his endowments, is little bet- 
ter than the brute. The being of God is inca- 
pable of demonstration, — but the existence of an 
external world is equally so. Nay, I think more 
so ; I would sooner undertake to demonstrate tlie 
former than the latter. So far from inferring the 
being of God from an external world, as theolo- 
gians have attempted to do, I need the belief in a 
God to assure the existence of things without. 

I come now to the second of those grounds on 
which Science bases her supreme claim, — greater 
utility, a more needful service. The world is not 
likely to forget the debt it owes to Science. That 
is a daily and hourly obligation for most of the 
comforts and conveniences of life. I have no de- 
sire to make light of that debt. But I see that 
the grandest things the world contains are not 



ESSAYS. 179 

the products of Science, but of Faith. Science 
could have had no beginning had not Religion 
first lifted man out of the dust and tamed his 
fierce passions, and given him an interest in life 
which made it worth his while to study the secrets 
of Nature, and to learn the reason and constitution 
of things. And not only so, not only the world's 
emancipation from brutal ignorance and savage 
enslavement to animal life, but those material 
products which are justly esteemed the ornaments 
of earth ; those works of the hand, those wonders 
of art which draw the curious across the globe, — 
temples, pyramids, statues, paintings, things which 
travellers compass sea and land to behold, — are 
due to the same source ; they owe to religion the 
impulse which gave them birth. Of these the poet 
could say (what may not be said of the railway 
or the telegraph) that — 

^ Nature gladly gave them plaoe, 
Adopted ihem into her race, 
And granted them an equal date 
With Andes and with Ararat.'' 

And even those discoveries and inventions of which 
Science claims the credit could never have been ac- 
complished by Science alone without the aid of 
Faith ; for Science can only see, not do. She is the 
ghost, rather than theology. " Star-eyed Science " 
has speculation in her eyes, indeed, but no force 



180 SCIENCE AND FAITH. 

in her hand, no blood in her veins. Not one of 
those improvements by which man becomes civi- 
lized, and more civilized from age to age, could 
ever have been achieved without the aid of Faith* 
It was Faith that first ventured out of sight of 
land in a ship, trusting to a bit of quivering iron 
and the stars. It was Faith that first thrust a steel 
lancet into the eye to remove a cataract It was 
Faith that first introduced poison into human veins 
to forestall a greater evil by a less. Geographers 
in the fifteenth century had divined the existence 
of another earth beyond the Atlantic waste ; but it 
needed the faith of Columbus to follow the setting 
sun across the deep, and unlock the gates of the 
West. The philosophers of the eighteenth century 
had conjectured the identity of lightning with what 
was then called ^' the electric fluid," but it needed 
the faith of Franklin to send up the kite which 
brought confirmation of that conjecture from the 
skies. Dr. Jackson, in our own day, had discov- 
ered the anaesthetic properties of ether; but it 
needed the faith of Morton first to administer the 
drug which disarms the surgeon's knife of its 
terrors. 

Faith and Science, Religion and Science, together 
have built up the world in which we live, — this 
social, civil, intellectual, ecclesiastical world of 
mankind. Both were needed to make the world 



ESS A YS. 181 

what it is, — a fit abode for rational beings. It 
would be bard to say which in time past has been 
the more needful, the more indispensable agent of 
the two. But if it be asked which now of the two 
could best be spared, it seems to me that the ques- 
tion is not difficult. If now and henceforth the 
alternative for man were the end and arrest of 
scientific progress, or the death of Faith, the shut- 
ting up of our churches, the choking forever of 
the voice of prayer, the derubrication of the cal- 
endar, the equalization of the week, the utter sec- 
ularization of life, then I say that the arrest of 
Science would be the lesser evil of the two. For 
society can exist without more knowledge; but 
take away Faith, and you snap the mainspring in 
the clock-work of life. You take away that with- 
out which " star-eyed Science " herself would soon 
become blind. You spread darkness over all the 
face of the earth, and make universal shipwreck 
of man's estate. For this human world, I main- 
tain, with never so much Science at the helm, can- 
not be sailed by " dead-reckoning " alone. There 
must be somewhere an observation of the heavens, 
or the ship which bears us all will founder. 

One thing more, and I have done. There has 
been much talk of a conflict between Religion and 
Science ; a learned savant of our own country has 
written a work on the subject. I take it upon me 



182 SCIENCE AND FAITH, 

to say that there never has been, and never can be, 
any such conflict, any conflict, between Religion and 
Science. In the loose way of speaking which the 
nse of abstract terms is apt to engender, other 
conflicts have taken tliat name. Conflicts there 
are between the speculations of scientific men 
and the convictions of religious men. There are 
conflicts between scientific facts, if you will, and 
religious prejudices ; conflicts between discoveries 
and traditions; conflicts between certain Biblical 
statements and the testimony of the rocks: but 
between Religion proper and Science proper, each 
on its own legitimate beat, there never has been 
nor can be any conflict, no more than there can 
be a conflict between Kepler's Third Law and the 
first verse of the Fourth Gospel. When, thirty 
years ago, Leverrier, with his mathematical divin- 
ing-rod, discovered the latent planet, now a known 
constituent of our solar system. Religion thanked 
God who had given such power unto man, and 
congratulated Science on the triumph of her great 
detective. When Mr. Tyndall published his expo- 
sition of the laws of Light and Heat, the pulpit 
had no fault to find with his teaching. But when 
this same Tyndall proposed to test the value of 
prayer by statistics, then Religion indignantly re- 
buked the man for meddling with a matter of 
which, to borrow a comparison from the late 



ESS A YS. 



188 



Father Taylor, he knew as little as Balaam's ass did 
of Hebrew. That was not a conflict of Religion 
with Science, but a conflict with Nescience. 

Let Science pursue the path marked out for her 
by her own great leaders, — the path, not of vague 
speculation, but of firm and patient induction, and 
Religion will rejoice with her in all her discover- 
ies, will thank her, and thank God, for every fact 
which she adds to the sum of human knowledge ; 
and when belated theologians bring up their He- 
braisms and pit them against her assured conclu- 
sions. Religion will join her in every rebuke which 
shall teach Theology to know her place. 



CLASSIC AND ROMANTIO. 

IFrom the AUantic Monthlff.'] 

TOWAHD the close of the eighteenth century 
there appeared in Germany, under the lead 
of Tieck, Novalis, and the Schlegels, a class of 
writers and of writings known as the Bomantio 
School. 

The appellation gave rise to wide discussion of 
what precisely is meant by that phrase, and what 
distinguishes " romantic " from " classic," to which 
it is opposed. Goethe characterized the differ- 
ence as equivalent to healthy and morbid. Schiller 
proposed "narve and sentimental." The greater 
part regarded it as identical with the difference 
between ancient and modern, — which was partly 
true, but explained nothing. None of the defini- 
tions given could be accepted as quite satisfactory. 

What do we mean by " romantic " ? The word, as 
we know, is derived from the old Romanic, or Ro- 
mance, languages, which formed in mediaeval times 
the transition from the Latin to the dialects of mod- 
ern Southern Europe. The invaders of Italy found 
a patois called Momana rustica^ thus distinguished 



m 



ESS A YS. 185 

from the pure Latin of the cultivated Roman. Ro- 
mance is a fusion of this Romana rustica with the 
native speech of barbarous tribes. It attained its 
most perfect development in Southern Prance in 
the country of Provence, where it became the 
langue d^oc; that is, the language in which "yes*^ 
is oc (German aucK)^ while in the Romance of 
Northern Prance " yes " is oiZ, in modem Prench 
out. 

Poems and tales in the Romance language took 
the name RomJtn, — in English, "romance" or 
" romaunt." 

Originally, then, " romantic " meant simply writ- 
ings in the Romance language, as distinguished 
from writings in the Latin tongue, the better sort 
of which were called classic, from classici; that is, 
" first-class." 

But the difference was not one of language 
merely. There was manifest in those Romance 
compositions — as compared with the classic — a 
difference of tone, of spirit, and even of subject- 
matter, which has given to the term " romantic " 
a far wider significance than that of literary classi- 
fication. We speak of romantic characters, roman- 
tic situations, romantic scenery. What do we 
mean by this expression ? Something very subtle, 
undefinable, but felt by all. If we analyze the feel- 
ing, we shall find, I think, that it has its origin in 



ir-rii^ 



186 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 

wonder and mystery. It is the sense of something 
hidden, of imperfect revelation. The woody dell, 
the leafy glen, the forest path which leads one 
knows not whither, are romantic ; the public high- 
way is not. Moonlight is romantic as contrasted 
with daylight. Tlie winding, secret brook, ** old as 
the hills that feed it from afar," is romantic as 
compared with the broad river rolling throagh level 
banks. 

The essence of romance is mystery. But now a 
further question. What caused the Romance writ- 
ings more than the classic to take on this charm of 
mystery ? Something, perhaps, is due to the influ- 
ence on the writers of sylvan surroundings, of wild 
Nature, as contrasted with the civic life wliich 
seems to have been the lot of the Latin classic 
authors. But mainly it was the influence of the 
Christian religion, which deepened immensely the 
mystery of life, suggesting something beyond and 
behind the world of sense. 

The word *' classic " is more commonly employed 
in the sense of style. It denotes the manner of 
treatment, irrespective of the topic. The peculiar- 
ity of the classic style is reserve, self-suppression 
of the writer. The romantic is self-reflecting. In 
the one the writer stands aloof from his theme, in 
the other he pervades it. The classic treatment 
draws attention te the matter in hand, the roman- 



HMB 



ESSA YS. 187 

tic to the hand in the matter. The classic is pas- 
sionless presentation, the romantic is impassioned 
demonstration. The classic narrator tells his story 
without comment ; the romantic colors it with his 
reflections, and criticises while he narrates. 

"Homer/* says Landor, "is subject to none of 
the passions, but he sends them all forth on 
their errands with as much precision as Apollo his 
golden arrows. The hostile gods, the very Fates, 
must have wept with Priam before the tent of 
Achilles ; Homer stands unmoved." 

Schiller draws a parallel between Homer and 
Ariosto in their treatment of the same subject, — 
an agreement between two enemies. In the Iliad, 
Glaucus and Diomed, — a Trojan and a Greek, — 
encountering each other in battle, and discovering 
that they are mutually related by the binding law 
of hospitality, agree to avoid each other in the 
fight, and, in token thereof, exchange with each 
other their suits of armor. Glaucus, without hesi- 
tation, gives his gold suit, worth a hundred oxen, for 
Diomed's steel suit, worth nine. Schiller thinks 
that a modern poet would have expatiated on the 
moral beauty of such an act; but Homer simply 
states it, without note or comment. Ariosto, on the 
other hand, having related how two knights who 
were rivals, — a Christian and a Saracen, — after 
mauling each other in a hand-to-hand combat, make 



. - 1 - - ^~^-J--=J;^^^ . "' ■ ■■ - J- ' - ■ - ■ ■ — ?^ 



188 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 

peace and mount the same steed to pursue the fugi- 
tive Angelica, in whom both are interested, breaks 
forth in admiring praise of the magnanimity of 
ancient knighthood: — 

« Oh, noble minds by knights of old poesessed 1 
Two faiths they knew, one love their hearts professed. 
While still their limbs the smarting anguish &el 
Of strokes inflicted by the hostile steel, 
Through winding paths and bnely woods they go, 
Yet no suspicion their brave bosoms know.'' 

There is no better illustration of the resenre, the 
passionless transparency and naSvetfj of the classic 
style of narrative than that which is given us in 
the Acts of the Apostles, — not the work of a rec- 
ognized classic author, but beautifully classic in its 
pure objectivity, its absence of personal coloring. 
In that wonderful narrative of Paul's shipwreck 
the narrator closes his account of an anxious night 
with these words : " Then fearing lest they should 
have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out 
of the stem, and wished for the day." Fancy a 
modern writer dealing with such a theme ! How 
he would enlarge on the racking suspense, the tor- 
tures of expectation, endured by the storm-tossed 
company through the weary hours of a night which 
threatened instant destniction! How he would 
dwell on the momentary dread of the shock which 
should shatter the frail bark and engulf the de- 



iiM 



■MMH 



ESSAYS. 189 

voted crew, the angry billows hungering for their 
prey, eyes strained to catch the first glimmer of re- 
turning light, etc.! All which the writer of the 
Acts conveys in the single phrase, ^^And wished 
for the day." 

Clear, unimpassioned, impartial presentation of 
the subject, whether fact or fiction, whether done 
in prose or verse, is the prominent feature of the 
classic style. The modem writer gives you not so 
much the things themselves as his impression of 
them. You are compelled to see them through his 
eyes ; that is, through his feelings and reflections. 
The ancients present them in their own light, with- 
out coloring. They would seem to have possessed 
other powers of seeing than the modern, who, as 
Jean Paul says, stands with an intellectual spy-glass 
behind his own eyes. Certainly they possessed the 
art of so placing their object as not to have their 
own shadow fall upon it. 

The difference is especially noticeable in poetry, 
where each style unfolds itself more fully, and both 
are perfected in their several kinds. Ancient po- 
etry is characterized by sharp delineations of indi- 
vidual objects, modern poetry by the color it gives to 
tilings, and the sentiments it associates with them. 

The healthy nature of the ancients cared little 
for anything beyond the visible world in which 
they moved. The finer their organization, the 



190 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 

clearer the impressions which they received from 
surrounding objects. The modem, estranged from 
Nature, is thrown back upon himself ; the finer his 
organization, the more feelingly he is affected by 
his environment. The ancient lived more in phe- 
nomena, the modem lives more in thought. Hence, 
as Schiller says, classic poetry affects us through 
the medium of facts, romantic through the medium 
of ideas. 

In the thought of the ancients — I speak partic- 
ularly of the Greeks — soul and body, spiritual and 
material, were not divided, but blended, fused in 
one consciousness, one nature, one man. This 
identity of matter' and mind which they realized in 
their life is expressed in all the creations of Gre- 
cian art. 

For us moderns this harmony is lost. The 
beautiful equilibrium of matter and spirit is de 
stroyed. We are divided within ourselves, our 
nature is rent in twain. We have discovered that 
we exist. We are become aware of spirit, and, 
like children .of a larger growth, would pick the 
world to pieces to find where it hides. To the 
Greeks the world was a fact ; to us it is a problem. 
Where they accepted, we analyze; where they 
rested, we challenge and dispute ; where they lost 
themselves in contemplation, we seek ourselves in 
reflection ; where they dreamed, we dream that we 



ESS A YS. 191 

dream. They enjoyed the ideal in the actual ; we 
seek it apart from the actual, in the vague inane. 

It must not, however, be supposed that ancient 
and classic on one side, and modern and romantic 
on the other, are inseparably one, so that nothing 
approaching to romantic shall be found in any 
Greek or Roman author, nor any classic page in 
the literature of modem Europe. What has been 
said is to be understood as indicating only the pre- 
vailing characteristics respectively of the earlier 
and the latter ages. 

Moreover, the word "ancient" is not intended 
to include all writers of Greek and Latin. The 
literary line of demarcation is not identical with 
the chronological one which divides the old world 
from mediaeval time. On the contrary, the pagan 
writers of the post-Augustan age of Latin literature 
have much in common with the modern. The 
story of Cupid and Psyche in the " Golden Ass " of 
Apuleius is as much a romance as any composition 
of the seventeenth or eighteenth century. The 
Letters of the younger Pliny and the "Attic Nights" 
of Aulus Gellius have very little of the savor of 
antiquity. The exquisite poem of the last-named 
writer, which gives the psychology of a kiss, begin- 
ning with, — 

** Dam semihulco snavio 
Meum puellum snavior," 



192 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 

is intensely modem. Even Tacitas, as a historiog- 
rapher, is reflective, and so far modem, as comr 
pared with Livy. Of Greek writers, also, Lucian 
and Plutarch, — especially the former, — if classic 
in style, are modern in spirit. 

On the other hand, Dante and Milton are classic 
in their objective particularity of presentment. 
Dante in his vision of Malebolge, where public 
peculators are punished by being plunged in a lake 
of boiling pitch, gives a Homeric description of the 
Venetian dock-yard where boiling pitch was used 
for the repair of vessels. 

Milton is not satisfied with comparing a war- 
rior's shield to the full moon, as other poets have 
done, but. Homer-like, adds : — 

** Whose orb 
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views 
At evening from the top of Fiesole, 
Or in Valdamo, to descry new lands, 
Rivers, or mountains in her spotty globe." 

Ancient and modern are not more sharply con- 
trasted than are Gibbon and Carlyle as historiogra- 
phers. Mark the calm, impersonal style in which 
Gibbon recounts the horrible slaughter of the fam- 
ily of the Emperor Maurice by the decree and in 
the presence of the usurper Phocas : " The minis- 
ters of death were despatched to Chalcedon ; they 
dragged the emperor from his sanctuary, and the 



■!■ 



ESSAYS. 198 

five sons of Maurice were successively murdered 
before the eyes of their agonizing parent. At each 
stroke which he felt in his heart he found strength 
to rehearse a pious ejaculation. . . . The tragic 
scene was finally closed by the execution of the 
emperor himself in the twentieth year of his reign 
and the sixty-third of his age.'' Compare this with 
Carlyle's account of the slaughter of Princess Lam- 
balle : ^^ She too is led to the hell-gate, a manifest 
Queen's friend. She shivers back at the sight of 
the bloody sabres, but there is no return. On- 
wards ! That fair hind-head is cleft with the axe, 
the neck is severed. That fair body is cut in frag- 
ments. . . . She was beautiful, she was good ; she 
had known no happiness. Toung hearts, genera- 
tion after generation, will think with themselves : 
* worthy of worship, thou king-descended, God- 
descended, and poor sister woman ! Why was not 
I there, and some sword Balmung or Thor's ham- 
mer in my hand ? ' " 

Modern English poetB, from Cowper on, with 
few exceptions, are strictly romantic, compared 
with their immediate predecessors. Most roman- 
tic of all, Scott in his themes and Byron in his 
mood. 

Among prose-writers romanticism has reached 
its climax in recent novelists, as shown in their 
attempted descriptions of scenery, particularly sky 

13 



194 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 

scenery. The elder novelists, from Richardson to 
Scott, attempted nothing of the sort. They de- 
scribe persons and scenes, but not scenery in the 
commonly received sense of the word. Though 
Scott indulges in descriptions of landscapes, he 
abstains altogether from ekjeeapeBj if I may be 
allowed the phrase, — I mean such pictures as Black 
undertakes in ^^ The Strange Adventures of a Phae- 
ton," and the author of " The Wreck of the * Gros- 
vcnor,' " in his maritime tales. In one of the most 
popular of living novelists I find, among others, 
this extravaganza : ^' In the whole crystalline hol- 
low, gleaming and flowing with delight, yet waiting 
for more, the Psyche was the only life-bearing 
thing, the one cloudy germ-spot afloat in the bosom 
of the great roc-egg of the sea and sky, whose 
sheltering nest was the universe with its walls of 
flame." What classic writer would have perpe- 
trated this amazing bombast? 

The choicest examples of the classic style in 
modern English literature, I should say, are Swift, 
Defoe, Goldsmith, and more recently Landor, the 
last of the classicists. 

If in these comments I have seemed to disparage 
the romantic style in comparison with the classic, 
I desire to correct that impression. The two are 
very different, but neither can be said, in the ab- 
stract and on universal grounds, to be better than 



tft:sa*a 



ESS A YS. 196 

the other, — better in and for every province of 
literature. For history one may prefer the cold 
reserve and colorless simplicity of the classic style, 
where the medium is lost in the object, as the light 
which makes all things visible is itself unseen. In 
poetry, on the other hand, the inwardness, the sen- 
timental intensity, the subjective coloring, of the 
romantic style constitute a peculiar charm which 
is wanting in the classic. This charm in Childe 
Harold, for example, abundantly compensates the 
absence of pure objective painting which one might 
expect in a descriptive poem. 

Romantic relates to classic somewhat as music 
relates to plastic art. How is it that painting and 
sculpture affect us? They arrest contemplation 
and occupy the mind with one defined whole. In 
that contemplation our whole being is for the time 
bound up. Consciousness excludes all else. Past 
and future are merged in the noWy real and ideal 
are blended in one. Music, on the contrary, not 
only presents no definite object of contemplation, 
but just so far as it takes possession of us pre- 
cludes contemplation ; it allows no pause. Instead 
of arresting attention by something fixed, it carries 
attention away with it on its own irresistible cur- 
rent. . It presents no finished ideal, but suggests 
ideals beyond the capacity of canvas or stone. 
Plastic art acts on the intellect, music on the feel- 



196 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 

ings ; the one affects us by what it presents, the 
other bj what it suggests. 

This, it seems to me, is essentially the difference 
between classic and romantic poetry. I need but 
name Homer and Milton as examples of the one, 
and Scott or Shelley as representative of the other. 
Instead of occupying the mind with well-defined 
images, romantic poetry crosses it with <^ thick- 
coming" fancies. 

Rhyine, a characteristic property of modem po- 
etry, favors this tendency, hindering clearness and 
fixedness of impression, perpetually breaking the 
images it presents, as the ripples which chase each 
other on the surface of a lake, though beautiful in 
themselves, prevent clear reflections of sky and 
shore. The classic poet is satisfied if his language 
exactly cover the idea; the romantic would pve 
his words, in addition to their logical and etymo- 
logical import, a suggestive interest: they must 
not only indicate the things intended, but must be 
the keynotes to certain associations which he him- 
self connects with them. The first couplet of the 
" Corsair " — 

** O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea, 
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free," — 

is not so much intended to paint the ocean as to 
convey the feeling which that element inspired in 



ESSA YS, 197 

the poet. Of the same character are those lines in 
Scott's " Rokeby " : — 

''Far in the chambers of the West 
The gale had sighed itself to rest." 

In his " Mazeppa," Byron puts into the hero's mouth 
the following experience of sunrise : — 

'* Some streaks announced the coming sun: 

How slow, alas, he camel 
Methonght that mist of dawning gray 
Would never dapple into day. 
How heavily it rolled away 

Before the eastern flame 
Rose crimson and deposed the stars. 
And called the radiance from their cars, 
And filled the earth from his deep throne 
With lonely Instre all hb own 1 " 

We have here no distinct image of sunrise, such 
as a classic poet would present, but we have, what 
is better, the sensations with which the phenom- 
enon is watched by the unfortunate victim. It is 
not the vision, but the heart's response to it, which 
the lines convey. 

The analogy with music is aptly illustrated by 
the larger function which sound performs in ro- 
mantic verse. The best passages of Paradise Lost 
would lose little if rendered in prose; but what 
would become of Scott, Moore, and Byron if 
stripped of prosody and rhyme ? All poetry by its 



198 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 

rhythmical form addresses itself to the ear; but 
romantic poetry depends so much on the co-opera- 
tion of that organ — on sound if read aloud, or the 
representation of sound if read silently — for its 
true appreciation that a deaf and dumb reader 
would lose the better part of the enjoyment we 
derive from such pieces as the " Burial of Sir John 
Moore " and Campbell's lyrics. To deny that this 
musical charm of romantic poetry is an excellence, 
is to contradict the aesthetic consciousness of the 
greater part of the reading world, and to pass con- 
demnation on some of the most cherished produc- 
tions of literary art. By how much music is more 
potent than painting, by so much romantic poetry 
will exercise an influence surpassing that of the 
classic on the popular mind. 

Goethe in his " Helena " — an episode which con- 
stitutes the third act of the Second Part of " Faust " 
— has attempted a reconciliation of the controversy 
then raging between the classicists and romanticists 
as to the comparative merits of either style, by show- 
ing that love of the beautiful and interest in life 
are common to both, and that what distinguishes 
them is merely formal and accidental. Helena 
represents classic beauty, Faust modern culture; 
Lynceus, the ancient pilot of the Argonauts, offici- 
ates as mediator between the two. Dialogue and 
chorus proceed, after classic fashion, in unrhymed 



ESSAYS. 199 

verse until Lynceus appears on the stage. He an- 
nounces the advent of the romantic by discoursing 
in rhyme. Helena declares herself pleased with 
that new style of verse, where sound matches sound, 
and the verses " kiss each other." She asks how 
she may learn to discourse in such pleasant wise. 
Faust answers, it is very easy; it is the natural 
language of the heart. He begins, — 

<< And when your breast with longing oveiflows, 
Tou look around and ask," 

(Pause. Helena breaks in) 

«» Who shares my throes ? '* 

So they play crambo until Helena has caught the 
trick. 

Goethe seems to have meant by this that the 
beauty of ancient poetic art, so extolled by the 
classicists, can take on a modem form without loss 
of what is most essential in it ; and on the other 
hand, that the deeper feeling which characterizes 
the romantic — the language of the heart — may 
ally itself with classic elegance, and add a new 
charm to antique beauty. 

Much of the symbolism of this strange poem 
(for the " Helena " is a poem, complete in itself) is 
obscure, and some of it misleading. In strict con- 
sistency, Euphorion, the offspring of Helena and 
Faust, ought to represent the fusion of the classic 



eA<i 



200 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 

and romantic in one. And such appears to hare 
been Goethe's meaning. But Euphorion confess- 
edly stands for Byron ; and Byron is sunply and 
wholly romantic, with no tincture of classicism in 
his nature or works. 

Not Byron, but Goethe himself, above all modem 
poets, combines the two under one imperial name. 
What is most characteristic in each kind may be 
found in unsurpassed perfection in the ample treas- 
ury of his works, — nay, in a single work ; for is 
not the First Part of "Faust" the very essence 
of romance, and is not the larger portion of the 
Second Part a reproduction of the classic Muse ? 

The " Iphigenie auf Tauris " was called an echo 
of Greek song ; but a still purer classicism meets us 
in the Elegies, in the " Pandora," and in the " Alexis 
and Dora." What a gulf divides these compositions 
from the " Sorrows of Werther " ! There Goethe 
anticipates by a quarter of a century the rise of the 
Romantic School in Germany, which was nearly 
contemporaneous with the same fashion in Eng- 
land : inaugurated in the latter country by Scott, 
in the former by Novalis and Tieck. The birth- 
years respectively of these three poets, Scott, No- 
valis, and Tieck, are 71, 72, 73 of the eighteenth 
century. The " Sorrows of Werther" first appeared, 
I think, in 1772. 

When I say that Scott inaugurated romanticism 



riiifMii^MMHiMl 



ESS A YS. 201 

in England, and Novalis and Tieck in Germany, I 
do not mean that the new turn which poetry took 
in those countries was due to them alone. The 
movement had a deeper origin than personal ca- 
price or the efforts of a clique. The revolution in 
literature was the outcome of a revolution in the 
spirit of the age, of which these writers were the 
unconscious exponents. Literature and life are 
never far asunder. Every age enacts itself twice, — 
first in its acts and events, then in its writings. 
The struggles and aspirations which agitated Eu- 
rope at the close of the eighteenth century elicited 
an echo in the breasts of her poets. The French 
Revolution, following our own, electrified the na- 
tions, causing them to thrill and heave as never 
before since the Protestant Reformation. It star- 
tled England out of her placid acquiescence in the 
pompous pedantry of Johnson and the boasted 
supremacy of Addison and Pope. In Germany it 
roused a protest against the shallow At(fklarung 
of the Universal German Library. Its effect in 
England was conspicuous in a richer diction, recov- 
ering somewhat of the opulence of the Elizabethan 
age. In Germany it made itself manifest in a 
more believing spirit and a deeper tone of thought. 

Other influences conspired to this end. The 
publication of the "Reliques of Ancient Poetry," by 
Bishop Percy, in 1765, presented, in the strains of 



202 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 

the old romantic time, a refreshing contrast with 
the polished tameness of contemporary verse. A 
similar service was rendered in Germany (Lessing 
having broken the spell of French classicism) by 
Herder's publication of the " Cid," his " Volker- 
stimmen," his '^ Andenken an einige altere deutsche 
Dichter;" by Clemens Brentano and Achim von 
Arnim's publication of "Des Knaben Wunder- 
hom;" by Wieland's "Oberon;" and by thb re- 
editing of the " Nibolungenlied." 

Another power on the side of romanticism, not 
commonly recognized, was " Ossian." The poems 
bearing this name were given to the public a short 
time previous to Percy's " Reliques," in 1763, and 
made a great sensation, partly on account of their 
novelty, and partly because of their reputed source. 
The ardor with which they were welcomed in Eng- 
land was soon damped, it is true, by doubts con- 
cerning their authenticity. The English people 
are constitutionally afraid of being " gulled," and 
when Samuel Johnson, the literary dictator of the 
day, pronounced them spurious, they were indig- 
nantly cast aside, — as if the authorship, and not the 
character, of the poetry determined its value ! The 
question of genuineness does not concern us in this 
connection; all I have to say about it is that if 
Macpherson wrote "Ossian,'* he had a good deal 
more poetic feeling than most of the poets of his 



iJMia^Kmta^mmmmaltimimmmf.^mm^m^^m^m 



ESS A YS. 203 

time, — certainly a good deal more than Dr. John- 
son had. In spite of all objectors, Wordsworth 
included, who condemns the poems on technical 
gromids, they have the effect of poetry on most 
readers. If they do not satisfy the critical sense, 
they breathe a poetic aura, and awaken poetic feel- 
ing in the breast. Nothing else can explain the en- 
thusiasm with which at first they were everywhere 
received. On the Continent especially, where no 
question of authorship interfered, they charmed 
unprejudiced minds. But what particularly con- 
cerns us here is the romantic tone of these com- 
positions. Whether uttered by an ancient Celtic 
bard, or composed by a modem antiquary, they 
were thoroughly romantic, and confirmed the ro- 
mantic tendency of the time. Napoleon, in whose 
rocky nature a wild flower of romance had found 
some cleft to blossom in, carried them with him in 
his expeditions, as Alexander did their literary 
antipodes, the Iliad and Odyssey. 

A marked feature of modern romanticism is love 
of the past, — that passionate regret for by-gone 
fashions which prompts the attempt to patch the 
new garment of to-day with the old cloth of former 
wear. The feeling which, early in this century, 
found inspiration in mediaeval lore, and loved to 
present the old chivalries in novel and song, is the 
same which inspires .the practical anachronisms of 



204 CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC. 

recent time, which in England seeks to reproduce 
the old ecclesiastical sanctities, which astonishes 
American cities with a mimicry of Gk>thic archi- 
tecture ; the same which forty years ago restored 
the long-disused beard, which now ransacks second- 
hand furniture-stores and remote farmhouses for 
claw-footed tables and brass-handled bureaus, which 
drags from the lumber-room the obsolete spinning- 
wheel, which rejoices in many-cornered dwelling- 
houses with diminutive window-panes, — the more 
unshapely the better, because the more picturesque. 
A mania innocent enough in these manifestations, 
but in its essence identical with that which inspired 
the knight of La Mancha, — the typical example for 
all generations of romanticism gone wild. 

It would be unjust, however, to maintain that 
the reaching back after old things is the sum of 
romanticism, as if what we so name were mere 
conservatism or reactionism. This worship of the 
past is only an accidental manifestation of a prin- 
ciple whose most comprehensive term is aspiration^ 
— a noble discontent and disdain of the present, 
which in the absence of creative genius, of power 
to originate new forms, seeks relief in the past 
from the weary commonplace of the day. 

The essence of romanticism is aspiration. 
Whether it look backward or forward, there is in 
it a spirit of adventure, — as much of it in the 



rtdti 



i^^u^tmmmmm 



ESS A YS. 



206 



Crusaders who sought a sepulchre in the East, as in 
the Spanish navigators who sought an Eldorado in 
the West ; as much in the arctic explorers who 
would force a waj through eternal frost, as in the 
Knights of the Holy Grail ; as much in the nine- 
teenth century as in the twelfth, in Garibaldi and 
Gordon as in Godfrey and Tancred. 

The romantic schools of German and English 
literature were transient phases already outgrown ; 
but the principle of romanticism in literature is 
immortal, — it is the spirit asserting itself through 
the form. Classicism gives us perfection of form, 
romanticism fulness of spirit. Both are essential, 
seldom found united; but both must combine to 
constitute a masterpiece of literary art. 



THE STEPS OP BEAUTY. 

{From the Unitarian Review.) 

BEAUTY is that quality in the objects of our 
contemplation which pleases irrespectiyely 
of use or any profit to ourselves resulting there- 
from. ^Esthetic philosophy does not, as usually 
received, embrace in its view of the beautiful the 
satisfactions of the palate ; yet, strange to say, it 
borrows from the palate the name of the faculty 
which regulates and constitutes aesthetic enjoyment 
in all its kinds, — the word " taste." Kant ascribes 
this to the idiosyncrasy and seeming wilfulness of 
aesthetic judgments, where, as in the matter of 
food, individual preference plays so important a 
part. *' You cannot," he says, " make me like a 
dish by reasoning about it and showing why I 
ought to like it ; I judge it with my tongue, and 
from that judgment there is no appeal. So, in the 
realm of art, no rules established by critics, and no 
majority of voices, can force my delight in any ob- 
ject in spite of myself." There is this analogy, 
but it does not, in my view, satisfactorily explain 



ifliiMMI 



ESS A F5. 207 

the use of the word " taste " in its application to 
beauty. A simpler explanation is that taste, in 
the physical sense, being the most active and posi- 
tive of our sensations, by a natural symbolism fur- 
nishes a convenient metaphor for those of a more 
ethereal kind. 

For the purpose of this essay I include in the 
word " beauty " whatever gratifies taste, in the 
metaphorical sense of the term. 

But tastes differ; what one condemns, another 
approves. Is beauty, then, a merely subjective ex- 
perience, with no ground or reason in the object ? 
Is one man's taste as good as another's ? Is there 
no absolute beauty ? Reason protests against such 
a conclusion. The alleged divergency of taste is, 
after all, superficial, very confined in its range, and 
overbalanced by a general uniformity of taste in 
things essential. We may differ in our preference 
of this or that style of architecture or dress ; but 
there are forms which all will agree in pronouncing 
beautiful, if only comparatively so, and there are 
monstrosities which all will condemn. No one 
will say that a satyr is as beautiful as the Belvidere 
Apollo, or a crab as comely as a gazelle. We 
speak of deformity : deformity implies a model, it 
presupposes normal forms of universal acceptance. 
We say ridiculous : our sense of the ridiculous is 
proof of a law of beauty or propriety to which all 



208 THE STEPS OF BEAUTY. 

that we term ridiculous is consciously or uncon- 
sciously referred. When we pronounce a thing 
ridiculous, we affirm an ideal, the departure from 
which makes it ridiculous. And when the aberra- 
tion from ideal beauty exceeds certain limits, we 
resent the incongruity as a moral offence; the 
author is judged to have sinned against a law in 
his mind as well as ours, and passes into like con- 
demnation with the work of his hands. 

A noted sinner in this kind was Prince Palla- 
gonia, a Sicilian nobleman of the last century, who 
made his palace a museum of all sorts of monstros- 
ities, exhausting his ingenuity in ugly inventions, 
and gaining as much celebrity by his systematic 
warfare against taste as others have achieved in its 
service. The lodge, as you entered the grounds, 
presented four huge giants, with modem gaiters 
buttoned over the ankle, supporting a cornice on 
which was depicted the Holy Trinity. The walls 
leading from the lodge to the castle were disgraced 
with every imaginable deformity, — beggars, men 
and women in tattered garments, dwarfs, clowns, 
gods and goddesses in French costume, mythology 
caricatured ; Punch and Judy cheek by jowl with 
Achilles and Chiron ; horses with human hands, 
horses' heads on men's shoulders, dragons, ser- 
pents, misshapen monkeys, all sorts of paws on all 
sorts of figures, with duplicates of single members, 



ESSAYS. 209 

and heads that did not belong to them. In the 
court-yard and castle, new enormities, — the walls 
not straight, but inclining to this side and that side, 
affronting one's sense of the horizontal and the 
perpendicular ; statues lying on their noses, rooms 
finished with bits of picture-frames with every va- 
riety of pattern. In the chapel, swinging from the 
ceiling by a chain fastened to a nail in the head, 
was a kneeling figure in the attitude of prayer.^ 

What shocks us in these enormities is not the 
strangeness, which would only surprise, but the 
violation of a standard, an ideal of beauty which 
we have in our minds, and with which we uncon- 
sciously compare them. The more that ideal is 
developed, the more sensible we are of beauties and 
defects. Thus, Nature reveals beauties to the pain- 
ter which are missed by the uninformed eye. And 
this explains the fact that a painted landscape 
seems often more beautiful than the original, and 
promises to one who sees it first more than the 
original fulfils. In the painting the beauty is dis- 
engaged, so to speak, from the substance, and 
made more apparent. For the beauty resides not 
in the material objects, the woods and the water, 
hill and vale, as such, that make the landscape, it 
is the reflection of something in ourselves, an idea 
which we bring to its contemplation. The more 

^ The description is from Goethe's Itallenische Reise. 

14 



210 THE STEPS OF BEAUTY. 

refined that idea, the more beautiful the landscape 
to our eye. The painter, carrying into Nature his 
own quick sense, has seized her deeper meaning; 
he sees the pure form of things abstract from the 
substance, and gives it on the canvas. He enables 
us to see the landscape as he sees it, he brings us 
into communion with his and its idea. 

Kant maintains that the Beautiful interests us 
only in society, that a man left alone on a desert 
island would neither adorn his hut nor himself.^ I 
hold, on the contrary, that the love of beauty be- 
longs to man as man, and in no human being can 
be utterly wanting or wholly inactive. Let the in- 
dividual be entirely secluded from his kind ; let 
him dwell in a desert shut out from the world, so 
that no influence from without shall disturb the 
pure spontaneity of his action : if you could look 
in upon him so situated, you would find in his ar- 
rangements, I fancy, some slight sacrifice to the 
eye, some faint regard for order and form. The 
sense of beauty is wanting in none, but no faculty 
is less perfect by nature. The germ only is given ; 
the rest is discipline. 

We may distinguish five grades or modes of 
beauty, — color, form, expression, thought, action. 

The perception of the beautiful begins with color. 
The eye rejoices in brilliant hues, — scarlet, purple, 

^ Eritik der Urtheilskraft, Analjtik d. Erhabenen. 



ESS A YS. 211 

green, and gold. It needs no culture to appreciate 
these ; they are patent to the child and the savage. 
But when we come to combinations of color, and a 
right selection in order to the best effect, the child 
and the savage are at fault. A degree of cultiva- 
tion is needed to select the purest tints, and so to 
arrange them as to produce a harmonious whole. 
A happy choice of colors in the making-up of a 
costume, in the garniture of a drawing-room, or the 
composition of a bouquet, betokens always a mea- 
sure of aesthetic refinement. 

To the gratifications of color succeeds the more 
intellectual enjoyment of form. The pleasure de- 
rived from color, at least from single colors, is 
purely sensuous, passive, the action of refracted 
light on the nerves through the medium of the eye, 
the least sensual of the senses. The relish of 
beautiful forms presupposes something more than 
sense. Mental co-operation is here required. The 
mind must construe the form to itself, and reflect 
upon it so as to seize its idea. It is true we are 
not conscious of any such process in ordinary 
cases; but a careful analysis of our impressions of 
formal beauty as distinct from grandeur — which 
yields a merely passive delight, the mind contribu- 
ting only the sentiment of wonder — will show 
them to be intellectual products. 

What constitutes beauty of form? Why are 



212 THE STEPS OF BEAUTY. 

sphere and oval, and even cube, more satisfactory 
than shapeless masses; the full moon and the cres- 
cent moon more pleasing than the gibbous; a 
vaulted roof than the flat ceiling of an ordinary 
dwelling ? The answer is given in the word " pro- 
portion.'* Proportion — in compound forms, sym- 
metry — is such a relation of part to part in a 
given body as shall produce in the beholder the 
feeling of equipoise. It answers to harmony in 
music. Schelling calls architecture "a music in 
space, ... as it were a frozen music." We might 
call it an arrested dance. Some feeling of this 
sort may have given rise to the Greek myth which 
presents Amphion building the city of Thebes by 
making the stones dance into place to the sound of 
his lyre. Sand strown upon a plate may be made 
to arrange itself in symmetrical figures by means 
of musical vibrations, — a fact which shows that 
the relation of form to music, the connection be- 
tween symmetry and harmony, is not a mere fancy, 
but is founded in the nature of things. 

The beauty of symmetrical forms may be figured 
as the result of a double movement, the balance of 
two opposite tendencies, — centrifugal and centri- 
petal, expansion and concentration. First, motion 
outward in dififerent directions from a common 
centre. This motion itself we contemplate with 
pleasure, — the pleasure experienced in beholding a 



^fcj— Miiiii^MiM— MtMiMiii I I ml 



ESSAYS. 218 

cloud diBpart and disperse into delicate lichens and 
gauze-like films, which grow more and more filmy 
as we watch them until they vanish in the^far 
blue ; or the similar enjoyment of seeing a volume 
of smoke on a still, bright day unroll itself with a 
lazy, cumbrous grace, and stretch contentedly away 
into invisibility. But this enjoyment is partial, 
and soon wearies. Motion outward does not long 
satisfy. The mind is not content to lose itself in 
endless departure, it tires of evolutions which 
come to nothing. It is forced back upon itself, it 
craves a result. This craving is met by a counter- 
motion from the circumference toward the centre. 
The first essays of that return movement give us 
Hogarth's line of beauty, — the wavy motion of a 
streamer in the wind. Its completion gives us the 
beautiful form. 

We have here the ground-plan of formal beauty 
as an object of visual and mental contemplation, — 
radiation in all directions to form an outline, and 
reference of all points in that outline to a common 
centre, the mind unconsciously going forth and re- 
turning to that centre in its contemplation. In 
the balance of these two tendencies or move- 
ments consists the feeling of proportion. All 
forms which yield this mental equipoise we pro- 
nounce well-proportioned, beautiful. What consti- 
tutes deformity in any object is the disturbance of 



214 THE STEPS OF BEAUTY. 

this harmonious relation between the perimeter and 
the centre.^ 

The next grade in the scale of beauty is expres- 
sion. Here, beauty assumes a decidedly intellect- 
ual character. Form pleases by affording the 
mind an agreeable pause, by throwing us back on 
ourselves in a state of tranquil contemplation. Ex- 
pression tempts us forth from ourselves into com- 
munion with what we contemplate. Expression 
constitutes the compound beauty of natural scenery 
as distinguished from that of single objects. The 
sky, earth, and water which compose a landscape 
interest us not as individual phenomena, but by 
their grouping, their blending together in one ex- 
pression, one face, — as it were the face of a spirit 
akin to our own, and answering our gaze with recip- 
rocal greeting. The beauty of expression reaches 
its acme in the human countenance, which in its 
perfection is the fairest of material creations, tlio 
last link in the chain which connects the visible 

^ If beauty of form, as exemplified in symmetrical structure, is 
rightly termed visible music, then, conversely, music may be said 
to be audible symmetry. The enjoyment derived from it through 
the practised ear is resolvable into a fine sense of proportion. 
Beauty as predicated of music I venture to class under the head 
of form. It is not the car in its primary function, but, as De 
Quincey, following Sir Thomas Browne, remarks, the reaction of 
the mind on the notices furnished by the car, that gives the enjoy- 
ment of music. But is not the same true of the enjoyment of 
beauty through the medium of the eye? 



mmamammmmkt^ibm^m 



ESSA YS. 216 

with the invisible. Heaven and earth meet in the 
face of a beautiful woman, where the beauty is of 
that supreme type which plastic Nature alone can- 
not fashion, mould she never so cunningly ; where 
a spiritual grace supervenes, and native intelli- 
gence, high culture, sweetness, and moral majesty 
transfigure fleshly tints and lines. 

Feminine beauty, it is true, is not all of this su- 
preme type. There is an animal beauty in which 
spirit has no part, where physical perfection of tint 
and feature, grace of form and movement, lack the 
crowning grace of moral inspiration. And this 
carnal beauty, it must be confessed, has exercised 
a more potent sway in human affairs than the spir- 
itual. Such must have been the beauty of Grecian 
Helen, of Thespian Phryne, of Cleopatra, of Hero- 
dias' daughter, of Waldrada, of Rosamond, of Agnes 
of Meran, of Nell Gwynn, and Pompadour, — 

** Quick and skilful to inspire 
Sweet, extravagant desire." 

What a power it has been in the history of nations, 
— a spell of fate turning the heads of men or 
dancing them off their shoulders, enslaving mon- 
archs, impoverishing States ! Yet see on what 
trifles the mere physical merit of facial beauty 
depends. How infinitesimally small the difference 
in lines and angles which divides beauty from ugli- 
ness ! Lavater has demonstrated the distance be- 



216 THE STEPS OF BEAUTY. 

tween the face of a frog and the normal human 
countenance by a scale of bat twelve types, in which 
any member of the series differs by a scarcely per- 
ceptible change from that which preceded and that 
which follows. If only twelve stages intervene be- 
tween the frog countenance and the human, judge 
how slight must be the measurable difference of 
contour between the human ugly and the fair. It 
is not the physical conformation of the face, the 
curve of the eyebrow, the curl of the lip, the length 
of the chin, the angle of the nose, the setting of the 
eyes and their color, the moulding of cheek and 
forehead; it is not the features in and of them- 
selves, minute varieties of a common pattern, quaint 
freaks of the flesh, — it is not these, but something 
behind which lights and inspires them, that gives 
those exquisite phases of expression which painting 
and sculpture reach after, but never quite compass : 
the maiden's rapt devotion, the beam of divinity 
in the eye of maternal love, the hero's triumph, the 
seer's ecstasy. 

The fugitive expression of a beautiful soul in a 
human countenance transcends the scope of chisel 
or brush. 

The beauty of expression is the highest beauty 
which matter takes on. To rise above this, we 
must leave the material and enter the realm of 
thought, specifically of literary art. 



^iilHi 



MBU 



ESS A YS. 217 

But literary aesthetic is a special topic, foreign to 
the plan of this essay. I pass at once to the last 
and crowning beauty of humanity, — beauty in 
action. 

By beauty in action I mean conformity with the 
moral ideal, a beauty identical with goodness in 
the more restricted use of that word. Goodness 
expresses the relation to the actor, beauty the rela- 
tion to the mind that contemplates the act. Good- 
ness denotes the substance, beauty the form. It is 
not, however, to all good actions in the ratio of their 
goodness that we accord indiscriminately the praise 
of beauty. We bestow that title more especially on 
those in which disregard of self and absence of cal- 
culation are most conspicuous. Actions prompted 
by the instinct of natural affection please us more 
than those in which the affections are sacrificed to 
duty. When the magistrate in the Eastern tale 
condemns the guilty father to be scourged in his 
presence, we are disgusted with the act while com- 
mending its justice. But our disgust is turned to 
admiration when, after the infliction, the son de- 
scends from the dignity of his office, lays aside his 
magisterial robe, dresses his father's wounds with 
his own hands, and bathes them with his tears. 
We recognize a fearful beauty in the lofty defiance 
of wrong with which the Roman father seizes a 
knife from the shambles and slays his daughter to 



218 THE STEPS OF BEAUTY. 

save her from outrage worse than death ; we admire 

the unflinching justice with which another Roman 

condemns to death his guilty sons : but, in either 

case, we are shocked by the act. If in these and 

similar instances the beautiful and the good appear 

to conflict, there are others which combine the two, 

and satisfy at once the utmost delicacy of feeling 

and the utmost rigor of the law, and which neither 

on the side of nature nor on the side of reason leave 

anything to wish. When Scipio Africanus dismisses 

unharmed 

*< In his prime youth the fair Iberian maid; " 

when Caius Marcius at the gates of Rome yields to 
the entreaties of his mother and his wife and the 
tears of his fellow-citizens, renounces his vengeance 
and spares the city ; when Regulus dissuades his 
countrymen from accepting the treaty which ofiFered 
salvation to himself, but compromised the safety of 
the State, and then, true to his plighted faitli, re- 
turns to Carthage to meet the cruel death which 
awaits him there ; when Pompeius refuses to tarry 
the storm, and against the advice of his friends, at 
the risk of his life, ships for Africa in quest of com, 
saying, " It is not necessary that Pompeius should 
live, but it is necessary that Rome, if possible, 
should be saved from famine," — we feel, regarding 
these acts as phenomena merely, a satisfaction akin 
to that which we experience in contemplating a 



tmmmm 



ESS A YS. 219 

perfect work of art, where it would be impossible 
to add anything or to take away anything without 
impairing their complete beauty. Our better soul 
sees itself reflected in their perfect fitness. We 
feel that here is truth drawn from our common 
nature. This lay in us too, could we but have 
uttered it. This is what we believe and feel and 
are. 

But while the feeling derived from beauty in 
action has something in common with the satisfac- 
tions of art, it has also something higher and better 
than art can give. We feel that this beauty is not 
like the beauty of art, phenomenal merely, but real 
and essential. It is not a charm residing in the 
soul of the spectator, but something inherent in 
the nature of the thing. In art, it is merely the 
form that pleases ; but here the form and the sub- 
stance are one. Moral beauty possesses the pecu- 
liar attribute of necessity. Through the freedom 
of the actor we revere the obligation of the law. 
Our sense of beauty in other things can afford to 
lie in abeyance and be often disappointed ; but the 
moral sense is imperative, and must not be gain- 
said. Truth in art we welcome gladly when it 
appears ; still, it is but a luxury, a thing that may 
be or may not be, without affecting materially the 
issues of life. But truth in action we cannot spare; 
it is the salt of the world : life would rot without 



SIS .f .lL»^i» 



220 THE STEPS OF BEAUTY. 

it. Moral beauty can stand by itself ; it needs no 
background, it asks no embellishment from any 
other source to set it off. When Phocion declines 
the hundred talents sent him by Alexander, and 
being urged to name some favor which he would 
accept as reward for his services, asks that some 
slaves who were confined in the citadel of Sardis 
should be set free, we care not to know what man- 
ner of man this was in his outward appearance, 
whether comely or deformed, whether elegant or 
rude ; wo are satisfied with the act. But where, 
on the other Iiand, this grace is wanting, or where 
it is violated and set at naught, all other grace and 
beauty and splendor vanish like the prismatic 
colors of the spectrum when a cloud comes over 
the sun. You visit a fine house, splendidly fur- 
nished and appointed, with all kinds of costly em- 
bellishment, and, while admiring these things, it is 
whispered in your ear that the owner has obtained 
them by unjust means, by peculation or extortion, 
or that the tradesmen or artisans who supplied 
them remain unpaid, and that they and their 
families are pining for want of the necessities of 
life. Would not these costly ornaments then lose 
their lustre? Would not your admiration be 
turned to disgust ? Would you not sicken at tho 
splendor which covered such wrong? In human 
life we cannot separate the phenomenal from the 



Ai*aflttMMIMalltiMliHMta 



ESSAYS. 221 

real, the show from the man. I defined beauty as 
that which gives pleasure irrespective of use; but 
here, in its highest phase, we see that beauty, as 
being identical with good, is one with use. 

Beauty is the great mediator between the flesh 
and the spirit. Its function is co-ordinate with 
that of religion : the oflSce of both is to win man- 
kind to the love of the true and the good. It was 
doubtless a feeling of this relation which suggested 
the use of the arts in religious worship. 

Well may beauty minister in temples made with 
hands ; for see how constant its ministry in the un- 
walled temple of the universe, and how it clothes 
creation as a garment ! No one can think lightly 
of its value in the economy of life who marks the 
place it occupies in the economy of Nature. If 
utility object to art that it offers but a world of 
shows, let utility observe that the universe itself is 
a show. All creation addresses itself to the eye. It 
is but the smallest part that the other senses can 
appropriate of external objects, and that small por- 
tion is lessened by exclusion or exhausted by use. 
But the eye has the entire universe for its fee- 
simple. Sun, moon, and stars, and earth and sea, 
are articled in its boundless fief. No use can ex- 
haust its sumless income. To it all things are 
tributary. For it the sun paints, the sky curves, 
the clouds roll, the landscape glows. Day by day 



222 THE STEPS OF BEAUTY. 

the morning's crimson process, the evening's fu- 
neral pomp, and all the wealth of chaliced flowers 
and plumed birds and insect dyes, and all that the 
ocean reveals of its pearly secrets, are tributes to 
the eye. From the diamond star in the deep above 
to its diamond image in the deep below, from the 
rainbow cloud to the rainbow shell, all vision glit- 
ters and blooms and waves with thousand-fold un- 
speakable beauty. 

The lesson which Nature teaches, shall it not 
inspire our philosophy of life? What a world it 
would be from which that lesson were banished! 
Imagine a State in which life should exhibit no 
love of beauty, no aesthetic aspiration. The sup- 
position implies the rudest aspect of savage life. 
It recalls the forest and the cave, from which men 
would never have emerged but for the humanizing 
influence of taste. To that we owe all our civiliza- 
tion. From the savage wigwam to the thronged 
city, the race has been guided by the hand of 
beauty. The first thing which the wild man does 
when he has filled his belly is to paint his skin. 
The next is to shape his garment ; and the earliest 
ofiice of the garment is not protection, but orna- 
ment. And so painting and shaping, he grows in 
all the dimensions of art to the perfect stature of 
civilized man. His wigwam becomes architecture ; 
his feathered girdle, elaborate costume ; his hollow 



ESSA YS. 223 

log, a flliip. And what he gains by this process is 
not so much comfort as decorum. An instinct of 
our nature demands that we add decency to com- 
fort, and grace to necessity, and fling the drapery 
of art around the meanest of our enjoyments and 
the commonest uses of life. Food snatched from 
the hearth where it is cooked, and devoured with- 
out ceremony, would nourish the body as well as 
when accompanied with those formalities which 
civilization has appended to the sensual act. But 
those formalities have converted the animal neces- 
sity to a social institution, which entertains the mind 
while it nourishes the flesh. 

Farther still, and upward ever, it is the oflBce of 
Beauty to lead her votaries. Not only from savage 
uses to polished civility, from wigwam and kraal to 
palace and towered city, from the rudest earthly to 
the most refined, but higher yet, from the earthly 
to the heavenly. The worship of a beauty above 
earthly shows is the highest homage of a true re- 
ligion. It is not the custom of public worship to 
apply to God the epithet "beautiful." We call 
him almighty, and magnify his power ; but is not 
beauty as true a manifestation of Deity as power ? 
And is not our sense of beauty as near divine as 
the wonder and awe which infinite power inspires ? 

Whatever the nominal object of our worship, 
there are two things which all men everywhere 



224 



THE STEPS OF BEAUTY. 



instinctively adore, — strength and beauty: the 
former embracing all possible demonstrations of 
creative and ruling energy ; the other including all 
the attributes of love and goodness which stamp 
that energy divine. 

The Christian Church has no traditional likeness 
of Jesus ; but a pious instinct taught the old 
painters to give him a face of beauty, so close the 
connection which their art divined between the 
holy and the fair. 

Michel Angelo pronounced beauty to be "the 
frail and weary weed " which Truth in this world 
puts on, in pity for human weakness. But can we 
conceive of any state in the infinite future, of any 
date in the eternal ages, when Truth will not 
clothe itself with beauty? For is not all beauty 
resolvable into truth ? Aspire how we will, we can 
never transcend the union of the two. Higher 
than beauty thought cannot mount 



ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 

l^From the North American Review,'] 

ETHIC is the science of right behavior, — its 
ground in human nature, and its application 
to conduct. The subject presents two topics, — 
first, the reason of right behavior, or the ground of 
moral obligation; second, the criterion of right 
behavior, or rectitude in action. 

What do we mean by " moral obligation " ? Why 
ought I to act in a certain way, to do this or that, 
and not to do otherwise? The answers to this 
question are mainly three, and characterize three 
different systems of ethic. We may call them the 
selfish, the politic, the ideal. The first finds the 
ground of moral obligation in self-love ; the second 
in social relations; the third, theologically speak- 
ing, in the will of Ood, or, — what is the same 
thing philosophically expressed, — in the moral 
nature of man. 

The selfish system is essentially that of the Epi- 
curean philosophy, — each one's happiness the su- 
preme good. This principle recurs with different 
modifications in some later systems, and notably in 

16 



226 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 

that of Paley, whose " Moral Philosophy " was once 
an approved text-book for the use of students. To 
the question, Why am I bound to act in a certain 
way? — e. ^., to keep my word, — Paley answers, 
Because if I do, I shall be rewarded for it in an- 
other life ; if I do not, I shall be punished for it in 
another life. We distinguish, he says, between an 
act of prudence and an act of duty. Wherein does 
the difference consist ? " The only difference is this, 
that in the one case we consider what we shall gain 
or lose in the present world ; in the other case we 
consider also what we shall gain or lose in the 
world to come." According to this view there 
would be no duty ; moral obligation would not exist 
for one who should be so unfortunate as not to be- 
lieve in a future life. Paley, then, is an epicurean, 
differing from the sage of Athens only in seeking 
satisfaction in another world instead of securing it 
in this. 

The system of Hobbes, who preceded Paley by a 
century or more, partakes partly of the politic and 
partly of the selfish. It is politic inasmuch as it 
identifies right with civil authority, and denies any 
higher law. It is selfish inasmuch as it identifies 
moral obligation with the good to be gained by obe- 
dience to civil rule. 

The politic systems, distinctively so called, are 
those in which the sole ground of moral obligsr 



^^mdtUitmmmmi^um 



ESS A YS. 227 

tion is the good of society, which measure duty by 
utility. The best representative of these is Jeremy 
Bentham, a stalwart intellect, a Hobbes redivivus ; 
in my judgment superior, in all that concerns social 
science, to modem Positivists. Bentham assumes 
utility to be the fundamental principle of morals. 
"By the principle of utility is meant," he says, 
"that principle which approves or disapproves 
every action whatsoever, according to the tendency 
which it appears to have to augment or diminish 
the happiness of the party whose interest is in 
question." 

*' If the principle of utility be a right principle to be 
governed by, and that in all cases, it follows that what- 
ever principle diifers from it in any case must be a wrong 
one. To prove any principle a wrong one, there needs 
no more than just to show it to be what it is, — a prin- 
ciple of which the dictates are in some point or other 
different from those of the principle of utility." 

" Of such principles there are several ; but they all 
agree in not accepting utility as the ultimate standard 
of right. 

*^ One man says he has a thing made on purpose to 
tell him what is right and what Is wrong, and that it is 
called a moral sense. And theu he goes to work at his 
ease and says, Such a thing is right, and such a thing is 
wrong. Why ? Because my moral sense tells me it is. 
Another man comes and alters the phrase, leaving out 
moral, and putting in common. He then tells you that 
his common sense teUs him what is right and what is 



>* Jj ^^ 



228 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 

wrong as surely as the other man's moral sense did; 
meaning by common sense a sense of some kind or 
other which he says is possessed by all mankind, — the 
sense of those whose sense is not tiie same as the au- 
thor's being struck out of the account as not worth tak- 
ing. This contrivance does better than the other ; for 
a moral sense being a new thing, a man may feel about 
him a good while without being able to find it out ; but 
common sense is as old as creation, and there is no man 
but would be ashamed to be thought not to have as 
much of it as his neighbors. Another man comes and 
says that as to a moral sense, indeed, he cannot find 
that he has any such thing, but he has an understand- 
ing, which will do quite as well. This understanding, 
he saj's, is the standard of right and wrong ; it tells him 
so and so. All wise and good men understand as he 
does ; if other men's understandings differ in an}'^ point 
from his, so much the worse for them, — it is a sure 
sign that they are either defective or corrupt. Another 
saj's that there is an eternal and immutable rule of right ; 
that the rule of right dictates so and so ; and then he 
begins giving you his sentiments upon anything that 
comes uppermost, and these sentiments you are to 
take for granted are so many branches of the eternal 
rule of right." 

These extracts indicate the spirit and intent of 
the utilitarian system of ethics as represented by 
Bentham, — a system in which there is no recogni- 
tion of any other source of moral obligation than 
the comfort of society, of any other right than that 



riw 



ESS A YS. 229 

which consists in augmenting the pleasures and 
diminishing the pains of our fellow-men. 

The latest form of utilitarian ethics is the out- 
come of that system of philosophy known as Posi- 
tivism. Here, as in Paley and Bentham, there is 
no recognition of absolute right and an aboriginal 
sense of right in moral agents. Instead of that, 
we have a modification of the brain resulting from 
hereditary experience of utility accompanying cer- 
tain modes of action. 

" Moral institutions," says Herbert Spencer, " are 
the results of accumulated experiences of utility. Gradu- 
ally organized and inherited, they have come to be 
quite independent of conscious experience. Just in the 
same way that I believe the intuition of space possessed 
by any living individual to have arisen from organized 
and consolidated experiences of all antecedent individ- 
uals who bequeathed to him their slowly developed ner- 
vous organization ; just as I believe that this intuition, 
requiring only to be made definite and complete by 
personal experiences, has practically become a form of 
thought, apparentiy quite independent of experience, — 
BO do I believe that the experiences of utility, organized 
and consolidated through all past generations of the 
human race, have been producing corresponding ner- 
vous organizations which, by continued transmission 
and accumulation, have become in us certain faculties 
of moral intuition, certain emotions corresponding to 
right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis 
in individual experiences of utility." 



1 



230 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 

The view presented in this statement I regard as 
a curious example of the extravagances into which 
a strong mind may be driven by pursuing to its 
ultimate one line of thought, by the despotism of 
a system. The analogue chosen by way of illustrar 
tion — the hereditary origin of our sense of space — 
suggests the question how primitive man came by 
his space-perceptions, which, one would say, mast 
have been rather essential to him in the operations 
by which he won his subsistence and got himself 
lived, after a fashion, in those dim years ; and far- 
ther (since heredity is cumulative), whether your 
and my sense of space is any more perfect than that 
of Pythagoras when he discoursed of the aweipov two 
thousand five hundred years ago. As to the physi- 
ology of this hypothesis, it seems to me that if our 
moral perceptions are nervous modifications derived 
from inheritance, the sons and grandsons of upright 
ancestors should be pre-eminently gifted in that kind. 
But 'wo have proof that the moral sense in such 
subjects is no finer than in persons of less honor- 
able descent, in spite of the noblesse oblige of the 
French aristocrat. Conduct, I know, may be de- 
termined by other influences than that of moral 
intuition ; but surely it might bo expected to bear 
some appreciable relation to such intuition. 

There is, however, a truth, a very important 
truth, involved in Spencer's theory. That truth is 



■ ■*>■ 






ESSAYS, 281 

the fact of an accumulation of moral capital in 
civil society, — a capital handed down from one 
generation to another, and to which each genera- 
tion contributes its own experience in works and 
lives. The growth of this capital is coeval with 
history ; it is vested in historic records, in biogra- 
phy, in literature, in churches and other institu- 
tions for the education and edification of human 
kind, but not, I think, in the intracranial ganglia 
of the human animal. It acts for the good of 
society, not as a physically plastic force, but as 
moral attraction, repulsion, incentive, guidance. 

One investment of this capital is custom. Under 
this head I will name an instance in which social 
influence acts with almost physical force, and 
comes near to verifying Spencer's doctrine of ner- 
vous modification. It relates to the intercourse of 
the sexes. In the earliest stage of human society, 
when polyandry prevailed, brothers of one family 
did not shun to mix with a sister in wedlock ac- 
cording to such form as was known to that rude 
time. The custom was found to be attended with 
evil consequences; it became obsolete; the moral 
sense was enlisted against it, and that so effectu- 
ally that now it is regarded as one of the blackest 
of crimes, and what may be called an instinctive 
aversion has made it one of the rarest. Here is a 
strong case — a solitary one, unless parricide be 



282 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 

another — of an hereditary sentiment ripening into 
a moral conviction, or, if you please, a moral in- 
tuition, whether through connate cerebral forma- 
tion, as Spencer claims, or, as I prefer to belieTe, 
through overpoweiing social influence affecting 
domestic education. 

But Spencer's doctrine teaches that man has 
originally no moral perceptions, no sense of right, 
— in effect, no moral nature ; not differing in this 
from the brut^. If this be allowed, it follows, I 
think, that man has no moral nature now. For 
civilized man differs from primitive man, not in 
the ground-elements of his constitution, but in 
training, development, habit. He acquires by he- 
redity the habit of acting, the disposition and im- 
pulse to act, in conformity with social well-being. 
But where does he get the feeling that he ought so 
to act, that such action is right, that he is bound 
to it, however adverse to his own inclination, how- 
ever it may seem to conflict with his own advan- 
tage ? Whence does he derive the idea of duty ? 
The mere perception that a given line of action is 
conducive to social well-being will not compel a 
man so to act if he sees no benefit, but, on the con- 
trary, injury accming to himself from such action. 
That perception will never induce him to sacrifice 
himself for the common good, unless reinforced by 
a strong sense of moral obligation. What do I 



J^WJi—— ■*— —itwfci— fc-**- tk 



ESSASY. 288 

care for the common good f My own gain is more 
to me than any benefit the public may reap from 
my action* Or suppose I feel some interest in the 
common weal, some public sympathy : there is in 
that sympathy no force sufficient to counteract my 
selfish inclination, no categorical imperative. But 
Duty comes in and says, ^^You must." A voice 
in my conscience, which I feel to be the voice 
of Ood, commands, and woe to me if I disobey. 
Herein precisely consists the difference between 
moral and political : the former finds its law with- 
in ; the latter, without. 

There is a radical distinction which we all feel be- 
tween " right " and " expedient." That distinction 
the utilitarian ethic overlooks. The terms " right " 
and " wrong" have no true place in that system ; they 
are borrowed from a higher plane of human experi- 
ence, and surreptitiously grafted on the stock of utili- 
tarianism. Take, for example, the virtue of honesty. 
The moral sense enjoins honesty as a form of right 
irrespective of use. According to Mr. Spencer the 
duty of honesty results from the experience of 
many generations that honesty, as the proverb 
goes, is the best policy. The saying is not true in 
the unqualified universality in which the proverb 
affirms it. Cases may be supposed in which, so far 
as the temporal prosperity of the individual is con- 
cerned, rigid honesty is not the best policy. But 



284 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 

let that pass; grant the truth of the proverb. 
How was it first discovered that honesty is the 
best policy ? How came it ever to be tried ? The 
carnal instinct is against it. When in early ages 
the carnal man saw an advantage to be gained by 
deception, and that deception not likely to be de- 
tected, and thereby to injure him in the end, he 
would be sure to deceive, unless a principle, other 
and higher than policy, restrained him. The first 
man who resisted the strong temptation to deceive 
was certainly not moved to such resistance by the 
accumulated experience of ages that honesty is 
the best policy wrought into his nervous structure, 
otherwise he would not have been the first honest 
man. He must have obeyed an imperative voice 
within, which said to him, " You must not deceive, 
you must speak and act the truth ; " and doubtlesB 
he experienced a sharp conflict with himself in 
obeying that mandate, as the conscientious man 
does now when honesty and seeming advantage 
collide. If it were always as distinctly seen, as 
clearly understood, as firmly believed, that honesty 
is the best policy, as it is that fire burns and water 
drowns, honesty would cease to be a virtue, and an 
honest act could not with any propriety be termed 
a moral act. In the words of Sir John Lubbock, 
" It is precisely because honesty is sometimes as- 
sociated with unhappy consequences that it is 



mam 



ESSAYS. 235 

regarded as a virtue. K it had always been directly 
advantageous to all parties, it would have been 
classed as useful, but not as right." 

I think we have abundant evidence of an aborigi- 
nal sense of moral obligation, a feeling of the dif- 
ference between right and wrong, as old as the 
eldest and rudest form of society, older than the 
State, as old as the tribe, — very imperfect, indeed, 
very crude, limited to very few topics, but not 
wholly dormant, not utterly inactive. There was 
never, I guess, a state of society so rude in which 
a man could wrong a friend or betray confidence 
without suffering remorse for so doing. 

I oppose, then, to the utilitarian view of the 
origin of moral obligation the doctrine of a moral 
sense proper to man as man, and constituting a 
part of the original dower of human nature. The 
feeling of remorse which follows wrong-doing can 
be accounted for in no other way. An injury 
done to an individual or society would not awaken 
that feeling except the moral sense had pro- 
nounced such injury a sin against one's self. 
And, on the utilitarian principle, remorse should 
never arise where no such injury has been perpe- 
trated. Dr. Darwin, referring to the case of the 
dog which, while suffering vivisection, licked the 
hand of the operator, remarks that ^Hhe man, 
unless he had a heart of stone, must have felt 



286 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 

remorse to the last day of his life.*' But why 
remorse, if the utilitarian doctrine is true ? The 
man was contributing, or intending to contribute, 
to the uses of science, which are the uses of soci- 
ety. Satisfaction, not remorse, should follow such 
action. 

I shall not undertake to prove to those who 
deny it the existence of an innate sense of right ; 
but let me recall to the reader's memory a beauti- 
ful illustration of it from Grecian history. The- 
mistocles had announced to the people of Athens 
that he had in his mind a project which, if put in 
execution, would be of great use to the State, but 
that the thing was of such a nature that it could 
not, before the execution, be made public. The 
assembly deputed Aristides to be the recipient of 
Themistocles's confidence, and, if he approved, to 
have it done. The project was to burn the Spartan 
fleet, then massed at Gythium, and thus to secure 
to Athens the supremacy on the seas. Aristides 
reported to the agora that what Themistocles pro- 
posed would be eminently useful, but would not be 
right. Whereupon the Athenians concluded that 
what was not right was not expedient, and rejected 
without a hearing the proposal of their greatest 
general. Says Emerson : " As much justice as we 
can see and practise is useful to men apd impera- 
tive, whether we can see it to be useful or not." 



ESS A YS. 287 

Let ns pass to the third, the ideal theory of 
moral obligation. The ideal theory is that which 
finds the ground of moral obligation in the simple 
idea of right. Plato, and after him the Stoics, 
are its chief representatives among the ancients. 
Plato's philosophic system is based on the assump- 
tion of eternal ideas, — ideas which are not percep- 
tions or states of the human mind, but which have 
an existence entirely independent of the human 
mind. Of these ideas the first category consists of 
the Beautiful, the Just, the Good. These are dif- 
ferent aspects of one and the same fundamental 
reality. And man's vocation, according to Plato, 
is to realize and embody these ideas in his life. 
This is duty, this is virtue. Hence, so far from 
basing morals on polity, Plato's system, on the 
contrary, bases polity on morals. 

The philosophy which during the days of its 
prevalence exercised unquestionably the greatest 
practical influence on its votaries is that of the 
Stoics. The atmosphere of that school, after 
converse with utilitarian and eudsBmonistic theo- 
ries, comes bracing to the soul as a nor'-wester in 
dog-days braces the nerves. The sublimest ideas 
have sprung from its theory, the grandest souls 
have been ripened by its training. We find them 
at the opposite poles of the social scale. Epicte- 
tus the slave, Aurelius the sovereign lord of the 



238 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 

world, — milk-brothers, suckled by the same high- 
hearted nurse who freed her foster-children with a 
freedom which bondage could not bind, and bound 
them with bonds from which thrones could not 
free. 

The first principle of the Stoic philosophy was 
that virtue is the supreme good, the only real good. 
Virtue for its own sake, not for any fruits which 
its exercise may yield. Be true to yourself; be 
not disobedient to the heavenly vision, to the high- 
est vision your mind has sight of. Mespue quod 
non esy said Pcrsius, the pure-souled poet of the 
sect. Ne te qucesiveris extra. Seek the ground of 
your action in yourself. 

Among moderns the foremost champion of ideal 
ethic is also the foremost philosopher of modem 
time. That title, I think, the vote of experts will 
assign to Kant. Kant proposes the autonomy of 
the will as the supreme principle in morals. 

*' Autonomy of the will is that quality of the will by 
which, irrespective of the character of all particular ob- 
jects of its willing, it is a law to itself. The principle 
of autonomy, accordingly, is to act in such a way that 
the maxims which govern our choice shall be included 
in our willing as universal law. . . . When the will 
seeks the law that shall determine it elsewhere than in 
the fitness of its maxims to serve for universal legisla- 
tion ; when, going beyond itself, it seeks its law in the 
quality of its objects, — we have heteronomy. The will 



ESS A YS. 289 

in that case does not give the law to itself, but takes it 
from its object through the relation which such object 
bears to its volition. This relation, whether based on 
inclination or on ideas of reason, admits only of hypo- 
thetical imperatives ; I am to do this because I desire 
that ; whereas the moral, that is, the categorical, impera- 
tive says : ' I must act so or so, whether I desire the 
object of the action or do not desire it/ . . . 

^' For example, I must seek to promote others' happi- 
ness, not because I care for it, whether in the way of 
direct inclination or on account of the complacency 
which Reason may find in it, but because the maxim 
which should exclude it cannot be included in one and 
the same willing, as law for all. . . . Love," he remarks, 
*Ms a matter of feeling, not of willing. I cannot love 
because I will, still less because I ought. Conse- 
quently, to speak of the duty of loving is nonsense. 
But beneficence, as action, may be subject to the law of 
duty. . . . 

^'To do good to others according to our ability is 
duty, whether we love them or not. And this duty 
loses nothing of its obligatoriness although the sad ob- 
servation should force itself upon us that our species, 
alas ! is not of such a character that on nearer acquaint- 
ance we find them particularly lovable. '* 

Montesquieu says of the Stoic philosophy that it 
is the only one which has produced great men and 
great rulers. I would add that it has given us in 
our own day, in our own country, the most thought- 
ful essayist and the most conmianding moralist of 
recent time. When we read Emerson's essay ou 



HI I'l'^M lUJ 



240 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 

Heroism, we feel ourselves lifted into a higher afe> 
mosphere, we breathe the pure oxygen of the 
Porch. The spirit of Antoninus found in him, 
after many generations, a kindred soul. It in- 
spires his poetry as well as his prose, and has 
given us such choice morsels as we find in some of 
his quatrains : — 

*' Though love repine, and reason chafe, 
There came a voice without reply: 
*T is man's perdition to be safe 
When for the truth he ought to die." 

And this happy versification of Eant's sublime 
maxim, ^' Duty the measure of ability, not ability 
the measure of duty : " — 

'* So nigh is grandeur to our dust^ 

So near is God to man, 
When Duty whispers low, * Thou must,' 
The youth replies, * I can.' " 

I find no valid ground of moral obligation but 
the inborn sense of right. To the question, Why 
am I bound to act in a certain way ? the final an- 
swer is. Because it is right. Prove an act or a 
course of action right, and you prove it binding. 
There is nothing more to be said about it. To dis- 
pute that authority is like disputing the claim to 
our preference of beauty over ugliness. Why must 
I prefer the bird-of-paradise to the crab ? Why 
must I prefer the form of the crescent moon to the 



MHHMHiirilHMkMiHMi^iMHlidi 



ESSAYS. 241 

gibbons, the face of Apollo to that of a satyr ? Be- 
cause the sense of beauty in me requires it. 

But now comes the question, What constitutes 
right ? Here the utilitarian ethic has the merit of 
supplying most of the tests and the most universal 
rule of right-doing. Although utility is not the 
source of moral obligation, it is in most cases the 
end. When in any case the question how to act 
presents itself to the conscientious mind, the meas- 
urable utility of my action must, in the absence of 
other tests, decide the question. And in most 
cases, perhaps, other tests will be wanting. It is 
always right, and therefore my duty, to act in such 
a way as to benefit my fellow-men. Bentham's 
rule, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, 
is well taken, provided I know what in the long 
run will be for the greatest happiness of the great- 
est number. Still, we cannot say categorically 
that utility is the measure of right; whereas we 
can say, on the contrary, that right, as discerned 
by the scrupulous and enlightened conscience, is 
the measure of utility. There are cases in which 
the right and the useful appear to conflict. In a 
presidential or gubernatorial election, we will sup- 
pose that the nominee of the party whose general 
principles and policy, as compared with its op- 
posite, I approve, and which I wish to prevail, is a 

Id 



242 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 

bad man. He is reckoned available on account of 
certain popular qualities, and is nominated accord- 
ingly. But I know him to be unprincipled, profli- 
gate, bad. On the ground of utility I might be 
tempted to vote for him as helping to defeat the 
party whose policy I mistrust, whose success I be- 
lieve would involve much evil to the conmion weal. 
But on the ground of right I cannot vote for himi 
for in so doing I should say by my act that such 
nominations are justifiable, and that moral quali- 
ties are not essential in the head of the nation or 
the State. In short, I should say : ^^ Do evil that 
good may come." 

And this, it seems to me, is one of the dangers 
to which utilitarian ethic is liable, — that of doing 
evil that good may come. It is vain to say that 
cannot be evil from which good shall spring ; that 
the only test of an act is its use ; that the tree 
must be judged by its fruits. I accept the rule, 
but with a different application. The tree must be 
judged by its fruits. But who can foresee all the 
fruit that shall spring from a given act ? Behind 
the immediate good, who shall say what evil may 
lurk, slowly ripening to its harvest of death? 
That act must be evil and a fountain of evil which 
the unperverted moral instinct condemns. But the 
moral instinct may be blinded by interest; it may 
be gagged by casuistry till the oracle turns dumb^ 



iiflMMHMlliHHfek 



ESSAYS. 243 

and right seems wrong, and wrong right. I fear 
that without something in us deeper and surer 
than all calculations of utility, our ethic would 
prompt infanticide and putting to death with some 
mild quietus the idiots, the misshapen, the hope- 
lessly diseased, the useless members of society. 
We know how in time past utility prompted tyran- 
nicide, and we know what came of such action. 
Brutus thought to do a useful thing by assassina- 
ting Caesar, — he hoped to restore the republic ; but 
he hastened its final extinction on the field of Phi- 
lippi. Charlotte Corday, the beautiful enthusiast, 
thought to do a useful thing by killing Marat, — she 
would free her country from oppression; but she 
caused it to fall into the liands of Robespierre. 

Who can measure consequences ? Who, mtent 
only on use, and knowing no other test, can be sure 
of the final balance of good and ill, can cast the 
limit of blessing or harm in acts that, prior to all 
calculation, have a character impressed upon them 
by the deep, prophetic soul, outreaching calculation, 
and ordaining, irrespective of seeming use. Thou 
shalt, and Thou shalt not ? But this we know : that 
the virtues not bom of use give birth to uses which 
compensate many of the evils that vex the utili- 
tarian mind. Say, rather, they are uses in them- 
selves. Patience is a use ; piety, fortitude are uses. 
Of these uses, and the duties we owe to ourselves. 



244 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 

utilitarian ethic makes small account. These it 
does not especially tend to promote. 

But if utilitarianism in morals incurs the danger 
of doing evil that good may come, the ideal ethic, on 
the other hand, is liable, when incontinently urged, to 
the opposite danger of ruthless absolutism. Kant 
himself, I think, offends in this sort when, in stem 
consistency with his lofty view of duty, he main- 
tains that no conceivable crisis in human life can 
excuse the utterance of a falsehood. You must not 
lie, is the first commandment in his code. You 
must not lie to spare the nerves of the dying and 
secure a euthanasia which the truth would defeat ; 
you must not lie to avert the career of a madman ; 
you must not lie to save a nation from ruin. I 
cannot consent, nor will humanity bend, to this 
anxious interpretation of the moral law. It seems 
to me based on a narrow view of truth. Truth is 
not a question of words alone, not a function of 
tongue and throat, but of the heart and the life. 
" Doth not Nature teach you ? " Nature is truth 
on the cosmic and secular scale ; but how Nature 
will lie, to human perception, with false appear- 
ances which deceive even the elect ! Do you say 
truth is an agreement between word and fact? 
Granted ; but truth is a thing of degrees, and the 
higher may hold the lower in suspense, as one force 
in Nature suspends another, as the law of gravita- 



MMHHli 



ESS A YS. 245 

tion is suspended by the flight of the lark. Truth 
is agreement of word with fact ; but truth is also 
fitness of means to ends. Let there be truth in the 
heart and truth in the will, as accordant with mercy 
and right, and the speech must conform thereto. 
But is not this precisely a case of doing evil that 
good may come ? And do I not contradict myself, 
haying said that what the moral instinct condemns 
must needs be evil ? I answer that my moral in- 
stinct does not, in such cases, condemn the verbal 
falsehood. My moral instinct does not require me 
to sacrifice sacred interests to a form of speech. 
My moral instinct commands me to save life, and 
not to destroy it. 

Fiat juBtitiaj mat ccelum (let justice be done, 
though the sky fall), is a favorite maxim of ideal 
ethic. It is one of those sounding plausibilities 
which, in some of its applications, the wiser mind 
will not approve. It depends on what the particu- 
lar justice is that would get itself done, and what 
is the sky that is going to fall. The greater must 
not be sacrificed to the less. The particular justice 
may mean the cause of a class ; the threatened sky 
may mean the cause of a nation. But the truth is, 
there can be no real conflict of moral interests, and 
no real conflict of a moral interest with the com- 
mon weal. Let justice be done to a class, and the 
nation will reap the benefit in the end ; and, vice 



246 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 

versa, injustice to a class imperils the welfare of 
the whole. The truer maxim, therefore, would be, 
Fiat justitia ne mat ccelum. 

It would seem that no one principle of practical 
ethic can claim unconditional acceptance or admit 
of universal application. Even the so-called gold- 
en rule, " Do unto others as you would that others 
should do imto you," has its limits. The judge on 
the bench, the jury in the box, are not doing by 
the criminal at the bar as they would be done by 
in like circumstances when they find him guilty 
and pronounce on him sentence of death. A more 
comprehensive maxim is that of Kant, " Act accord- 
ing to the rule you would wish to be the universal 
rule of action." 

The right and the beautiful in action, though 
usually coinciding, are not strictly commensurate. 
An act is not always beautiful in the measure in 
which it is right, or vice versa. The lie with which 
Desdemona excuses her murderer is beautiful ; but 
can we pronounce it right ? An act is not especially 
beautiful of which the contrary would be base. We 
bestow that praise only on acts which transcend 
the bounds of strict obligation and culminate into 
tlie heroic. Sydney Smith extols the act of one 
who, having purchased a lottery-ticket for himself, 
and another for a friend who was not informed of 
the number designated for him, when his own num- 



ESS A YS. 247 

ber drew a blank and the other a large prize, made 
over the prize to his friend. He might have changed 
the destination of the numbers, and no one would 
have been the wiser ; therefore he is said to have 
acted beautifully. But could he have respected 
himself had he done otherwise ? Would not his 
conscience have condemned the substitution as false 
and base ? The act, it seems to me, was simply 
right; it could claim no special beauty. 

The act of Damon in offering himself as a host- 
age for his friend was beautiful ; the act of Phin- 
tias in rendering himself at the proper time to 
redeem his pledge and endure the cross was simply 
right. The beautiful acts which history has pre- 
served to us, the doings of such men as Aristides 
and Leonidas, of Regulus, of Scipio, of Arnold 
Winkelried, are the beaming light-points in the 
annals of humanity. More instructive than all 
our ethics, they reveal the possibilities of human 
nature, and teach the utilitarian that the best of 
all uses are heroic souls. And these are ripened 
in no utilitarian school, but draw their inspiration 
from a source which philosophy will never sound. 
The great man teaches, by his doing and his being, 
more and better than Plato or Kant, reason they 
never so wisely. It was said of Cato that he was 
to Rome the thirteenth Table of Laws. And with- 
out the thirteenth how defective the twelve would 
have been ! 



248 ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 

The essence of all virtue is disinterestedness, 
self-abnegation. And of all unbeliefs the most exe- 
crable is that which denies the reality and capacity 
of disinterested goodness, — the vile doctrine, not 
less blasphemous than it is absurd, that every 
good deed, every generous effort, if rigorously ana- 
lyzed, will be found to have its source in self-love. 
The benevolent, it is said, find satisfaction in the 
exercise of their benevolence ; it is therefore their 
own satisfaction which they seek, as the sensualist 
seeks his in sensual pleasures. They have both 
the same end in view; there is no difference be- 
tween them, except in the methods they have hit 
upon for the attainment of that end. The one 
may be more cunning, but morally he is no better 
than the other. Martyrs, patriots, philanthropists, 
are all self-seekers ; self-sacrifice is only selfishness 
in disguise. May such selfishness abound ! In the 
words of Dr. Brown : " It is a selfishness which 
for the sake of others can prefer penury to wealth, 
which can hang for many sleepless nights over the 
bed of contagion, which can enter the dungeon a 
voluntary prisoner, ... or fling itself before the 
dagger which would pierce another's breast, and 
rejoice in receiving the stroke. It is the selfish- 
ness which thinks not of self, the selfishness of all 
that is most generous and heroic in man, the 
selfishness which is most divine in God." 



mamm 



ESS A YS. 



249 



The conclusion is, that utilitarian ethic, however 
serviceable in complementing the idea and illu- 
mining the path of the right, lacks the element of 
the moral as distinct from the expedient. There 
is a right and a wrong independent of use. As 
far as the east is from the west, so far is the right 
from the wrong, though all the apparent and com- 
putable utilities gather round the latter, and only 
its own sanctity envelop the former. 

Well nught Kant bow in awe before the sense 
of right, likening it in grandeur to the starry 
heaven. For does it not, like that, lay hold on 
eternity? And is it not precisely the strongest 
thing in the universe of intelligent being ? Lodged 
in a feeble human frame which a blast may wither, 
it shall finally compel into its orbit all the powers 
that be. 



GHOST-SEEING.i 

[From the North American Review,] 
Wir sind so king, und dennoch spnkt's in Tegel. — FausL 

IS there within the bounds of Nature, perceptible 
to mortal sense, the reality of what is intended 
by the word " ghost " ? Or is all reputed ^host- 
seeing pure hallucination on the part of the seer 7 

The question, notwithstanding belief in ghosts 
is as old as human history, still awaits an authori- 
tative answer. It still divides the opinions alike 

1 1. Zauberbibliothek. 6 Theile. Von Georg Conrad Hortt. 
Mainz. 1821-26. 

2. Artemidori Daldiani et Achmetis Sercimi F. Oneirocritica. 
Lntetise. 1603. 

8. Arthur Schopenhauer. Parerga und Paralipomena. "GeUt- 
ersehen und was damit zusammenhangt." Berlin. 1862. 

4. Hallucinations, etc. Bj A. Bricrre de Boismont. Phila- 
delphia. 1858. 

6. The Philosophy of Apparitions. Bj Samuel Hibbert 
Edinburgh. 1824. 

6. The Night-side of Nature ; or, Ghosts and Ghost-seers. By 
Catherine Crowe. New York. 1860. 

7. Visions : A Study of False Sight. By Edward H. Clarke, 
M.D. Boston. 1878. 

8. Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World. By Robert 
Dale Owen. Philadelphia. 1860. 

9. The Seeress of Preyorst. By Justinus Kerner. From the 
German. By Mrs. Crowe. New York. 1856. 



Ml 



ESSA YS. 261 

of the thinking and the unthinking, — some affirm- 
ing on the ground of experience or credible testi- 
mony, others denying on the ground of alleged 
improbability or impossibility. The one-sided cul- 
ture of physical science is swift to reject whatever 
eludes material tests, complacently resolving into 
temporary suspension of reason the professed ex- 
perience of witnesses whose mental sanity is other- 
wise allowed to be unimpeachable. 

The aversion of science to this class of phenom- 
ena is due to the prevalent assumption of a super- 
natural origin. Call them " supernatural," and you 
shut them out from the field of scientific inquiry, 
whose limits are the bounds of Nature. Let us at 
once discard this phrase as impertinent and mis- 
leading. With what there may be outside of Na- 
ture we have nothing to do in this connection. K 
Nature means anything, it means the all of finite 
being. The question is : Are ghosts a part of that 
all, subject to Nature's method and rule ? Grant 
the affirmative, and you encounter difficulties which 
seem to the understanding insurmountable. As- 
sume the negative, and you are confronted by a 
mass of testimony which no sane philosophy can 
aflford to despise, — testimony reaching back to re- 
motest time. When the author of the book of Job 
makes Eliphaz the Temanite say : ^' A spirit passed 
before my face ; the hair of my flesh stood up : . . . 



jjn- T-iiTiTra 



252 GHOST-SEEING. 

I could not discern the form [that is, the outlines] 
thereof: an image was before mine eyes/' — he voices 
the experience of countless ghost-seers from that 
time to this. Pliny the younger, writing more than 
a thousand years later to his friend Sura, asks his 
opinion about ghosts, and tells a story of a haunted 
house at Athens which reads precisely like one of 
the narratives of Jung Stilling or Mrs. Crowe. 

However the learned may decide the question, 
ghosts or no ghosts, in foro scienticBy ghostseeinffy 
explain it as we may, is a fact about which there 
is no dispute. It is of this, in some of its phases, 
that I propose to speak. 

I begin with the nearest, the phenomena of 
dreams. Dreaming is a kind of ghost-seeing, a 
beholding of phantoms, personal and impersonal, 
of forms and faces, human or bestial, animate or 
inanimate. "I saw," people say when relating 
their dreams. The objects are phantasmal, but 
the seeing is actual. We call it seeing with '^ the 
mind's eye " when the object seen is not materially 
present. But in fact it is only through the mind 
that we see at all, in the sense of perceiving. No 
physiologist can explain the connection between 
the image on the retina and the act of perception. 
In waking vision as well as in dreaming, it is the 
mind that perceives, constructing from notices fur- 
nished by the eye, in accordance with certain cate- 



ESS A YS. 258 

gories of the understanding, the object perceived. 
What the eye reports is not the object perceived 
by the mind, but only the motive and occasion of 
the vision. Images may be painted on the retina 
when nothing corresponding with those images is 
seen by the mind, because the mind in a fit of ab- 
straction is seeing something else. ^' Her eyes are 
open," says the doctor in " Macbeth." " Ay ! but 
their sense is shut." 

The presence of an external object is not an in- 
dispensable condition of seeing; the sensation so 
termed may be induced by the independent, spon- 
taneous action of the mind. We see in our dreams 
as truly as in our waking experience, or what we 
call waking. For, after all, who knows what wak- 
ing is, except as contrasted with our nightly sleep, 
or how far we are really awake when we seem to 
be so? Shakspeare may have written more truly 
than he knew, or than we interpret him, when he 
made the old magician say, ^^ We are such stuff as 
dreams are made of." I can imagine a waking out 
of this chronic somnambulism of our life which 
shall show us the reality of what we now see only 
the symbol and the shadow. 

Dreaming, like waking, is a thing of degrees. 
Our ordinary dreams are a meaningless play of 
phantasms for which we see no cause, and care too 
little to seek one. A confused rabble of incongru- 



2rA GIIOST-SEEISQ. 

otM imatrcn drives across the field of our Tirion 
the ^^ wild hunt " of German folk-lore, and leaves 
no distinct impression on the mind. Dreams of 
this sort — and they constitute the larger part of 
our dreaming — are due to imperfect sleep, sleep 
in which the state of the body, and the action upon 
us of the world without, prevent the entire seclu- 
sion and free action of the soul. The brain is 
still active, but no longer retains its gubernatorial 
ofTice ; it lets go the helm, and mental life drifts. 
In perfect sleep the senses are shut to all external 
impressions, and the soul, which knows no sleep, 
disencum}>ered and freed from the thraldom of 
sense, inhabits and fashions its own world. The 
dreams which occur in that state have a staid, 
consequential character ; they mean something, 
had we only the key to their right interpretation. 
Such dreams are not very common ; for although 
the soul must be sui)po8ed to be always active in 
sleep, yet in order that its action may give us 
dreams, it must report itself in the brain, and 
whether, and how distinctly, it shall do so in any 
case, must depend on the idiosyncrasy of the in- 
dividual. Then, again, supposing the soul's noc- 
turnal experience to report itself in the brain, 
there is still another condition of dreaming ; to wit 
that the record present itself to our consciousness 
on waking. For a dream which we are not aware 



ESSAYS. 255 

of having had, is no dream. And that encounter 
of our consciousness with the night record depends 
on the manner of our waking. If the transition 
from deep sleep to broad waking is gradual, the 
passage through that antechamber and limbo of 
the mind is likely to prove a baptism of oblivion. 
But let a man be suddenly awakened out of a deep 
sleep, and always, I believe, he will be aware of 
having dreamed. He will catch the vanishing 
trail of a vision if he does not recover the whole. 
That which wakes him will be apt to mingle in 
some way with the dream, and constitute one of its 
moments. For, be it observed, no dream is com- 
plete, — they are all fragments, episodes to some 
unknown method and epic of the soul. 

The soul has methods of her own, and converses 
on her own account with the invisible world, — a 
converse independent of place and time. She has 
visions not only of what is, but of what is to be. 
Hence dreams are sometimes prophetic, either in 
the way of distinct annunciation, as the elder Afri- 
canus, in the '^ Somnium Scipionis," foretells to the 
younger his coming fortunes; or in the way of 
allegory, as Pharaoh's dream of the seven fat kine 
and the seven lean kine foreshadowed, according 
to Joseph's interpretation, so many years of plenty 
and so many of famine. 

An instance of allegorical dreaming is recorded 



•^^^■Bif^^M&ffia 



9SB 



256 GHOSTSEEINO. 

by Goeihe as happening to his maternal grand- 
father, Textor, portending his promotion to a seat 
in the Senate. He saw himself in his customary 
place in the Common Council, when suddenly one 
of the aldermen, then in perfect health, rose from 
his chair on the elevated platform occupied by that 
board and courteously beckoned to him to take the 
vacant seat. This man soon after died in a fit of 
apoplexy ; a successor, as usual, was chosen by lot 
from the lower board, and the lot fell to Textor. 

A third class of prophetic dreams are those in 
which coming events are neither foretold in words, 
nor allegorically foreshadowed, but seen by the 
dreamer as actually occurring. Such dreams are 
styled by Artemidorus ^ " theorematic." Mrs. 
Crowe, in her " Night-side of Nature," records a 
dream of this sort relating to Major Andr^, of 
tragic fame. When Andr^, on a visit to friends in 
Derbyshire, before his embarkation for America, 
was introduced to a certain Mr. Cummington, that 
gentleman recognized in him the original of the 
countenance of a man whom he had seen, in a 
dream, arrested in the midst of a forest, and after- 
wards hung on a gallows. 

Schopenhauer relates an instance from his own 
experience. He had emptied his inkstand by mis- 
take instead of the sand-box on a freshly written 

^ Oneirocritica» lib. i. cap. 2. 



ESSAYS. 257 

page. The ink flowed down upon the floor, and 
the chamber-maid was summoned to wipe it up. 
While doing so, she remarked that she had dreamed 
the night before of wiping up ink from the floor of 
that room. When Schopenhauer questioned her 
statement, she referred him to the maid who had 
slept with her, and to whom she had related the 
dream on awaking. He called the other maid, and 
before she could communicate with her fellow- 
servant, asked her, ^' What did that girl dream of 
last night ? " "I don't know." " Yes, you do ; 
she told you her dream in the morning." ^^ Oh, I 
remember ! She told me she dreamed of wiping up 
ink in your library." 

Dreams like this, too trivial to be recorded, and 
seldom remembered, are psychologically valuable, 
as tending to prove that the soul is essentially 
clairvoyant. When not impeded and overpowered 
by the action of the senses and the exigencies of 
the waking life, it seems to be taken up into union 
with the universal spirit, to which there is no here 
nor there, no now nor then, and to have sight not 
only of what is, but of what has been, and of what 
is to be. These categories of past, present, and 
future, which determine the action of the finite 
mind, have no existence for the infinite. To that 
all place is here, and all history now. 

This view of prophetic dreaming, familiar to 

17 



258 GHOST'SEEINO. 

modern psychologists, is bj no means new. Soo- 
ratcs, in the ^' Phaedon," declares that true vision 
comes to the soul when detached from the bodj. 
Quintus, in Cicero's " De Divinatione," says : " The 
soul ^ flourishes in sleep, freed from the senses and 
all impeding cares, while the body lies supine, as if 
dead. And because this soul has lived from all 
eternity, and has been conversant with innumerable 
souls, it sees all things in Nature." * 

And again : " When the soul in sleep is screened 
from companionship and the contagion of the bodj, 
it remembers the past, discerns the present, fore- 
sees the future. Much more will it do this after 
death, when it shall have altogether departed from 
the body. Hence at the approach of death its 
divining power is greatly increased." ^ " The dying 
behold the images of the dead." Posidonius of 
Apamea, he tells us, supposes three ways by which 
the soul may have prescience of the future : first, 
by its own nature, as related to Oodhead ; second, 
by reading the truth in other immortal souls, of 
which the air is full ; third, by direct converse of 
Deity with the soul in sleep.* 

The soul, when sleep is perfect, has visions inde- 

^ The word is animus, wliich, though usually rendered " mind/' 
is evidently, in this connection, equivalent to what we caU " soul." 
2 De Divinat., lib. i. 51. 
' lb., lib. i. 80. * lb. 



ESSA YS. 259 

pendent of time and place, seeing as present what 
to the waking subject is future. Whether or not 
the vision shall be transmitted to the brain, and 
there brought to consciousness, depends on organic 
conditions which are found in some subjects and 
not in others. When thus transmitted it takes the 
form of a dream, — it maj be allegoric, or it maj 
be theorematic. And such dreams are prophetic, 
fatidic. When, on the other hand, a vision of im- 
pending calamity, for want of the requisite condi- 
tions, fails to formulate itself as dream in the 
brain, it induces, according to Schopenhauer, that 
vague, uneasy foreboding of evil which we call 
*^ presentiment." A presentiment, then, is an abor- 
tive vision. 

Nearly related to the class of dreams which I 
have designated as ^' theorematic " is the kind of 
vision which takes the name of " deuteroskopy," or 
second-sight, and constitutes a more advanced 
stage of ghost-seeing. 

Second-sight is dreaming without the accompani- 
ment of sleep. The soul involuntarily passes into 
the same state of abstraction which it experiences 
in deep sleep, and has visions which it communi- 
cates to the brain, whereby the seer beholds, as 
with his bodily eyes, things distant in space, and it 
may be in time, as if they were present realities. 



ajp.— 



260 GHOST-SEEINQ. 

Dion Gassius and Philostratus both relate that 
ApoUonius of Tyana beheld at Ephesus, while talk- 
ing with his disciples, the assassination of the 
Emperor Domitian, which was then occurring in 
Borne. The life of Apollonius contains many in- 
credible things ; but this vision has, for those who 
are not predetermined against eyerjrthing of the 
sort, an air of likelihood from the close resemblance 
which it bears to modem reputed cases of second- 
sight. It is hard to believe that all the stories, so 
widely diffused and so strongly vouched, of similar 
visions are forgeries. But incredulity in seeking 
to evade a marvel often embraces a greater. Swe- 
denborg, conversing with friends at Gottenburg, is 
said to have been arrested in his speech, precisely 
as Apollonius was, by the vision of a fire then 
raging at Stockholm, — a distance of nearly three 
hundred miles. No fact in Swedenborg's life is 
better attested. Such things do not admit of ab- 
solute demonstration, and there are minds so con- 
stituted as to be incapable of receiving anything of 
which the understanding cannot detect the method 
and the law. Incredulity in such matters is com- 
monly regarded as the mark of a strong under- 
standing. If so, a strong understanding is not the 
highest type of mind. The fact is, it is oftener the 
will than the understanding which refuses credit 
to spiritual marvels. 



ESSAYS. 261 

Second-sight, it will be observed, is not Taticina- 
tion; it is not a foretelling of the future on the 
ground of the present, not a reading of probabili- 
ties, but a vision which happens to the seer, — per- 
haps is forced upon him when not thinking of the 
subject, but engaged with something else. Dr. 
Johnson, in his account of a journey to the He- 
brides, thus describes it. ^^ The second-sight is an 
impression made either by the mind upon the eye, 
or by the eye upon the mind, by which things dis- 
tant or future are perceived and seen as if they 
were present A man on a journey, far from home, 
falls from his horse; another, who is perhaps at 
work about the house, sees him bleeding on the 
ground, commonly with a landscape of the place 
where the accident befalls him." 

The dear Doctor reserves his decision as to 
the authenticity of these phenomena. ^^ There is 
against it," he says, ^^ the seeming analogy of 
things confusedly seen and little understood ; and 
for it the indistinct cry of national persuasion, 
which, perhaps, may be resolved at last into preju- 
dice and tradition. I could never advance my 
curiosity to conviction, but came away at last only 
willing to believe." 

A case of second-sight not unlike the visions of 
the Highland seers occurs in Homer's Odyssey, 
where Theoklymenos, at a feast of Penelope's suit- 



-i.^.T^i,J -■<■!;■<-■**:*-— .■ *".-■■«■-■ -■-» 



262 GHOST-SEEINO. 

ors, sees them already suffering the yengeauce 
which awaits them, — 

ffldfl&Awv 8i tX/ov xp6$vpo¥ wKttfi Zh need a^X4» 

To the same category has been assigned the cele- 
brated vision of Cazotte regarding the Reign of 
Terror in France, of which he himself was a victim. 
If authentic, it is certainly the most astounding ex- 
ample of prevision on record. We have it on the 
authority of La Harpe, who, it seems, did not him- 
self give it to the Press. It was found among his 
papers, and published after his death. De Bois- 
mont says it can only be received with hesitation, 
though vouched by Madame de Genlis and Madame 
la Comtesse de Beauharnais. For my own part, 
I incline to believe that Cazotte did utter in La 
Harpe's presence the substance of the prophecy 
ascribed to him, but that La Harpe, writing from 
recollection, after the events predicted, uninten- 
tionally mingled details of what happened with 
what he heard. 

We come now to ghost-seeing, in the narrower 
and commonly received sense of the term, distin- 
guished from second-sight by greater immediate- 
ness of vision in the seer, and a more defined 
personality in the object In second-sight the 



ESSA YS. 268 

objects are seen as in a picture ; but here they 
are seen as material objects appear to the waking 
eye. 

Foremost in this class are the hallucinations 
caused by disease, and universally recognized as 
such, the phantoms evoked by mania a potu^ and 
the often-cited spectral affliction of the Grerman 
Nicolai. Poor Nicolai is pilloried by Goethe in the 
" Walpurgisnacht " where he figures as "Prokto- 
phantasmist," with a broad allusion to the leech- 
cure prescribed by his physician. Scarcely he 
deserved that pimishment, already sufficiently pun- 
ished by the irony of fate, which doomed the great 
champion of rationalism, the doughty denier of 
ghosts, to be visited by troops of ghosts in broad 
day for successive weeks. The case is important 
as proving that sight is not dependent on ex- 
ternal impressions. It is false to say, in such 
cases, that the subject ^'imagines" that he sees. 
He does see, as truly as I see the paper on which 
I am writing, though not by images painted on the 
retina. Through the eye alone we see nothing but 
color and motion. All perception is an act of the 
understanding; and in the cases we are consider- 
ing, it is the understanding that distinguishes be- 
tween phantom and objective reality. The maniac 
confuses the one with the other. The visual sen- 
sation is tlie same ; the eye perceives no difference. 



264 GHOST'SEEINO. 

The spectre-Btricken lady mentioned bj Dr. Clarke ^ 
was obliged to '' thrust her fan into the spectre " 
occupying the chair appointed for her at a dinner- 
party, to assure herself that a phantom, and not a 
being of flesh and blood, had usurped her seat. 

Speaking of ghosts at a feast, it seems to me a 
great mistake, in the representations of ^^ Macbeth " 
on the stage, to make a real body sit for Banquo's 
ghost in the royal chair. He enters, treads the 
stage, and takes his seat like an ordinary living 
person; no power of make-believe can show him 
other. A good actor, gazing at vacancy, may 
easily seem to envisage something invisible to the 
rest of the company. That something vanishes 
when the usurper resolutely claims his seat. 

«* Why 80 —being gone, I am a man again.** 

We have examples of ghost-hearing, of ghosts 
that present no visible image, but address them- 
selves to the ear alone. 

Captain Rogers, commander of a ship called 
" The Society," boimd to Virginia in 1664, while 
asleep in his cabin dreamed that some one pulled 
him by the arm, calling to him to get up and look 
out for the safety of the ship. He was awakened 
by the dream, but paid no heed to the summons, 
and went to sleep again, when the warning was 

1 Visions, p. 24. 



ESSA YS. 265 

repeated. This happened several times, till at last, 
though aware of no danger, he turned out and 
went on deck. The wind was fair; a sounding 
taken a short time previous had shown a hundred 
fathoms. There seemed to be no ground for alarm, 
and he was about to turn in again when a voice 
from an invisible speaker said to him : ^^ Heave the 
lead ! " It was done, and eleven fathoms reported. 
" Heave again! " said the voice. Now it was seven 
fathoms. The captain immediately gave the order: 
" 'Bout ship ! " and by the time the order was exe- 
cuted the sounding was only four fathoms. Evi- 
dently the ship, on her former tack, would have soon 
run aground.^ 

Robert Dale Owen has recorded an amazing story 
of the rescue of a wrecked vessel off the Banks of 
Newfoundland by means of a timely apparition.^ 
In 1828 the mate of a bark in that latitude, sitting 
in his stateroom and working out his observation 
for the day, espies in the cabin some one whom he 
supposes to be the captain, writing on a slate. 
Going nearer, he discovers that it is not the cap- 
tain, nor any member of the bark's company. The 
captain is called, but the stranger has vanished. 
They examine the slate ; on it is written, " Steer to 
the nor'west." The wind permitting, curious to 

1 Ennemoser's History of Magic, appendix. - Quoted hj Bin. 
Howitt from a work entitled " Signs before Death." 
s Footfalls, etc., The Beacae, p. 88a 



• .'. . . T — J^ 



266 GHOST-SEEINQ. 

know what would come of it, they lay their coarse 
in that direction, ordering a sharp lookout from 
the mast-head. In a short time they come upon a 
vessel fast bound in ice, threatened with destruc- 
tion; crew, officers, and passengers nearly fam- 
ished. These are taken off by the bark, and in 
one of the passengers is seen the prototype of the 
writer on the slate, who had been lying in a pro- 
found sleep at the time when the stranger appeared 
in the cabin of the bark. This verifies what Sir 
John Lubbock says, that in dreaming, the spirit 
seems to leave the body. 

The peculiarity in this case, supposing the narra- 
tive authentic, is the want of a previous connec- 
tion, and attraction arising therefrom, between the 
ghostly visitor and the mate of the bark. The case 
is as hard to classify as it is difficult of belief. 
The strongest argument for its authenticity is pre- 
cisely its uniqueness in the annals of spectrology. 
It is simply too strange for fiction. 

A careful study of the records of apparitions will 
show, I think, that such visitations most often 
occur in the hours of daylight, and not, according 
to popular superstition, at dead of night. And — 
what is very important — the best authenticated 
cases are those of living persons, or persons in 
articulo mortis^ or recently departed, and not of 
persons long deceased. 



MMMMi 



ESSAYS. 267 

Of Swedenborg's professed intercourse with the 
spirits of the departed I have never been able to 
satisfy myself how much, or whether aught, can be 
justly regarded as objective converse, as anything 
more than the seer's dream. The alleged tests, for 
example, — the reporting of what passed between 
the Princess Ulrica of Sweden and her brother at 
their last interview before the death of the latter, — 
I cannot accept as complete demonstration. The 
Princess herself, it seems, was not convinced. " How 
Hcrr von Swedenborg obtained his information I 
cannot guess, but I do not believe that he conversed 
with my departed brother." 

Apparitions of the living, on temporary leave of 
absence from their bodies, present, if not a more 
credible, a more acceptable phenomenon. 

That the soul of a living person possesses this 
power of disengaging itself for a time from the 
fleshly body, and appearing at a distance by means 
of the more ethereal body which is proper to it, 
and a semblance of apparel with which it invests 
itself, is confidently assumed by pneumatologists. 
The theory of these psychical outings explains the 
supposed fact of spectral apparitions, and was evi- 
dently framed for the purpose. Deep mutual sym- 
pathy between two widely separated individuals 
may, it is believed, bring this faculty into play 
when one of the parties in sore distress craves the 



268 GHOST'SEEINO. 

other's presence and aid. Captain Meadows Tay- 
lor relates a vision which he had in India of a 
dearly beloved English lady whom he had hoped 
some time to call his wife : — 

^* One evening I was at the village of Dewar Eudea, 
after a long afternoon and evening march from Maktol. 
I lay down very weary ; but the barking of village dogs, 
the ba}ing of jackals, and over-fatigae and heat, pre- 
vented sleep. I was wide-awake and restless. Sud- 
denly — for my tent-door was wide open — I saw the face 
and figure so familiar to me, but looking older, and 
with a sad and troubled expression. The dress was 
white, and seemed covered with a profusion of lace, and 
glistened in the bright moonlight. The arms were 
stretched out, and a low, plaintive cry, ' Do not let 
me go! Do not let me go!' reached me. I sprang 
forward, but the figure receded, growing fainter and 
fainter, till I could see it no longer ; but the low, sad 
tones still sounded. ... I wrote to my father. I 
wished to know whether there was any hope for me. 
He wrote back to me these words : ' Too late, my dear 
son ; on the very day of the vision you describe to me, 
was married.' " 

Of this actio in distanSj Schopenhauer claims that 
the intervening space between the agent and the 
object, whether full or void, has no influence what- 
ever on the action ; it is all one whether that space 
be the distance of an inch or of a billion Uranus- 
orbits. He supposes a nexus of beings which rests 



mmm 



ESSAYS. 269 

on a very different order, — deeper, more original 
and immediate than that which has the laws of 
space, time, and causality for its basis ; an order in 
which the first and most universal, because merely 
formal, laws of Nature are no longer valid; in 
which time and space no longer separate individ- 
uals, and in which, accordingly, the individualiza- 
tion and isolation wrought by those forms no longer 
oppose impassable boimds to the communication of 
thought and the immediate influence of the will. 

From the ghosts of the living we pass to the 
ghosts of the dead. If the soul before the cessa- 
tion of animal life can act on distant objects and 
present an appearance to distant friends, it would, 
a fortiori, seem to possess this power when animal 
life is extinct, or on the eve of extinction. The 
records of apparitions of persons in articulo mortis 
are too numerous and too well vouched to admit of 
reasonable doubt. Wieland, an inveterate sceptic 
on all points connected with a future life, admits 
the possibility of such apparitions, and gives an 
instance from his own knowledge, which he pro- 
nounces ^Mndubitable, but incomprehensible and 
incredible." ^ 

Differing from this in the circumstance that a 
day had elapsed between the death and the appa- 

1 Eathanasia. Drittet Gesprich. 



270 GHOST-SEEINO. 

rition, is the case related by the afore-named 
Meadows Taylor among his Indian experiences. A 
soldier enters his captain's tent and begs that the 
arrears of his pay may be sent to his mother in 
England. The captain, busy with his writing, takes 
down the address and promises to fulfil the re- 
quest. Shortly after, it occurs to him that the 
soldier had violated the rules of the service in 
entering the tent without saluting, and in his 
hospital dress. He summons his sergeant. ^^ Why 

did you allow to come to me in that irregular 

manner ? " The man was thunderstruck. " Siir,*' 
he exclaimed, " do not you remember he died yes- 
terday in hospital, and was buried this morning ? " 
Narrations like this, though not to be received 
without reserve and careful weighing of the evidence 
on which they rest, are somewhat relieved of their 
incredibility by the supposition of an interval, 
greater or less, between the cessation of animal life 
and the entrance of the soul on its new career. K 
any living, thinking principle survives the ruin of 
the flesh, if there be a " soul," in the popular sense, 
that soul will be likely to retain for a time the 
sensibilities and to feel the attractions of its old 
relations. The desire to benefit surviving friends 
can hardly be denied it. If this can only be done 
by a personal apparition, the appearing in familiar 
form will be simply a question of power to appear. 



ESS A YS, 271 

I can as easily conceive the soul to be endowed 
with that power as I can conceive of psychical ex- 
istence at all, dissevered from the animal body. 
But where the aim of the apparition is merely in- 
formation, — the communication of some important 
fact, — it is not necessary to suppose an objective 
presence. The end may be accomplished by sub- 
jective impressions, by action on the mind of the 
individual to be informed, — in other, words, by a 
vision. And so I can suppose that the captain in 
the India service, in the anecdote just related, 
may have had a vision of the soldier, effected by 
the will of the latter acting on the mind, and 
through the mind on the senses, of the former. 
This explanation, it is evident, will not apply to 
cases in which the reputed apparition leaves a sen- 
sible token behind, as in that of the shipwrecked 
voyager who left his writing on the slate. 

Of a different sort, and more diflScult of belief, 
are objective apparitions of the long deceased. The 
improbability increases with the lapse of time. It 
would be imphilosophical to deny apodictically the 
possibility of such apparitions, but one may be 
pardoned for reserving assent to what, if true, per- 
plexes one's view of the future state with added, 
insoluble difficulties. The reason for greater slow- 
ness of belief in this case than in that of the re- 
centiy departed is the feeling that souls once 



272 GHOST'SEEINQ. 

thoroughly severed from the flesh, new-bodied and 
new-sphered, cannot quit their new sphere except 
by the way of new death. Were it not so, — if, con- 
scious of a former existence and inspirited by its 
memories, departed friends and departed worthies 
could ^^ revisit the glimpses of the moon," and make 
themselves manifest in earthly scenes to earthly 
sense, -then, assuredly, such visitations would l^ 
among the unquestioned and common events of 
life. But what are the hundreds or the thousands 
of recorded apparitions to the sumless millions of 
the dead ? Saint Augustine was confident that the 
dead could not return, for if they could, his sainted 
mother would have come to him with instruction 
and counsel and relief. The argument has weight : 
if one can return, why not others; why not all? 
If the thing were not impossible, who can doubt 
that many longing souls would have experienced 
and established it beyond a question ? Were there 
any sure path or passage, or way of communion 
with that dumb realm, who can doubt that human 
affection would have found it out? If the dead 
could come to us, how often would they not have 
been forced to come at the call of love ? What 
spirit endowed with human sensibilities could re- 
sist that appeal if the way were open to hear and 
answer? We must either doubt that "quae cura 
fuit vivis eadem sequitur tellure repostos/' or 



ESS A YS. 278 

conclude that the gates of the silent land open but 
one way. 
Says Wordsworth's Margaret : — 

** I look for ghosts, but none will force 
Their way to me ; 't is falsely said 
That there was ever intercourse 
Between the living and the dead; 
For surely then I should have sight 
Of him I wait for day and night 
With love and longings iniinite." 

Modern sorcery, misnamed "spiritualism," pro- 
fesses to have opened the everlasting gates and to 
maintain free communication with departed souls, — 
not with former acquaintance merely, but with any 
and all of the wise and good who figure in human 
history. The number of those who agree in this 
profession amounts to many thousands, its votaries 
say millions. Science has examined their preten- 
sions, and pronounced them groundless; and be- 
cause, here and there, it detected imposture, has 
rashly concluded that imposture and delusion are 
the only factors in the business, — that all who en- 
gage in it are either knaves or fools. 

Whether any of the phenomena of spiritism ne- 
cessitate the supposition of unknown, intelligent 
agents, is a question I do not care to discuss. I 
will only remark that physical science can hardly 
be regarded as a trustworthy witness or a compe- 
ls 



"saapwre^scr 



274 GHOST-SEEINO. 

tent judge in a matter where the fundamental posi- 
tions of the parties are antagonistic, where the 
method of the critic conflicts with the postulate 
conditions of the advocate, and where a hundred 
failures or detected impostures are not decisive 
against the whole class of phenomena in question. 
But as for pretended communications with defunct 
worthies, there is, in my judgment, no sufficient 
proof of anything authentic in this kind. The ex- 
amples which have hitherto been offered confirm 
this judgment ; and when the necromancers plead, 
as excuse for the platitudes of these utterances, that 
the communication is qualified by the " medium " 
through which it comes, they fail to perceive that 
this admission is fatal to their cause. When 
Wordsworth and Shakspeare are made to drivel, it 
is obvious that wo have the mind of the " medium," 
and not the mind he is supposed to represent. For 
thirty years and more this sorcery has been in 
vogue, and not one ray of unquestionable light has 
been shed on that which it most concerns us to 
know of the future state. Granting the agency of 
spirits in some of its manifestations, the grand 
mistake of spiritism is the taking for granted that 
disembodied spirits are necessarily wiser and more 
knowing than spirits in the flesh. The more ra- 
tional presumption is that the acting spirits in 
these experiments — spirits that have nothing better 



ESSAYS. 275 

to do than to assist at table-tipping and other 
tricks for the entertainment of gaping marvel- 
mongers — have lost the little knowledge and the 
little sense they may have had when clothed with 
mortal bodies. Justinns Kemer, the most scientific 
and conscientious of modem pneumatologists, con- 
firms this view. He and others who have studied 
the subject with serious care agree with Plato that 
only the souls of the brutal and depraved revisit 
the earth and approach mortals with objective 
manifestations. 

The question of ghosts, so far as it relates to the 
sensible manifestation of translated souls, is one 
which eludes the grasp of science. The negative 
is indemonstrable on physical grounds ; and the 
afiirmative can never, by individual testimony, be 
established in the common conviction of mankind. 

That the spirits of the departed are near us in 
sympathy and trust, not unconscious of our doings 
and our fortunes, nor quite unable to help us in 
our straits with occult influences and unworded 
suggestions, it is pleasant to believe. That they 
can be cited and summoned at wilU constrained to 
answer inquiries, brought to the witness-stand in 
a court of necromancers, cross-questioned by a 
" medimn," pumped to amuse a prurient curiosity, 
is a notion abhorrent to all my conceptions of a 
future state, and seems a desecration of the rev- 



iii&U 



276 GHOST'SEEINO. 

erend sanctities of the spirit-world. For aught I 
know to the contrary, there may be spirits in ^^ the 
yasty deep," grovelling, lost creatures, who aid and 
abet these fooleries ; but, for my part, I wish to 
have nothing to do with these clowns of the pit 

There are mental experiences, mysterious, in- 
definable, which suggest the action upon us of 
conscious, intelligent powers, — experiences which 
answer to the beautiful idea of spiritual guardian- 
ship so rife in ages past. Who has not known 
them? Who has not experienced at times those 
sudden intuitions, impulses, new determinations of 
thought and will, whose advent could not be ex- 
plained by association of ideas, as links in a chain 
of mental sequence, where the preceding involves 
the following, but which burst upon us like mes- 
sages from the Unknown, interposing with a flash 
new births of the soul ? Inspirations that shed 
exceeding day on the mind, — those inexplicable 
warnings that restrained us on the brink of danger, 
those swift fulgurations of hope that caught us 
tottering on the verge of despair, those sweet con- 
solations welling up from the deep in our agony of 
grief, — who has not known them ? How natural 
to suppose in them a spiritual influence streaming 
in upon us from without! If spirits may not 
visit us with those sensible approaches which 
make us 



ESSAYS. 



277 



<( 



— fools of nature 
So horridly to shake our dispositions 
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our soolSy 



»i 



yet, granting the existence of spirits unfleshed, 
impalpable, there is nothing in reason that forbids 
the supposition of their proximity, of their minis- 
tering presence, of their quickening influence. 

Who can believe that the limits of sense are the 
bounds of intelligent being ? And out of that un- 
seen world where science cannot reach, and which 
enfolds the visible as space encompasses sun and 
planet, who knows what strengths may come to 
feed and refresh this mortal life? 



PERSONALITY : 

A PAPER READ BEFORE A CLERICAL COHnESNCE. 

WORDS exercise a fatal influence on thought 
and belief. When turned from their orig- 
inal import and fixed in some perverted use, thej 
breed misconception and propagate endless error. 

The word persona (from which our English 
^^pei*son") meant originally a mask such as an- 
cient actors wore upon the stage. In the Greek 
and Roman drama all the parts were performed 
in masks. The mask was called in Greek wpo- 
acDiretop, from TrpoaoD'jrop, " face ; " in Latin, per^ 
sonaj from persona^ "I sound through." Hence 
very naturally these words came to signify the 
part performed, the character represented. We 
say in English to personate a character ; that is, 
to wear the mask of that character. 

From the boards of the theatre the phrase was 
transferred to the scenes of life. Persona was 
used to denote the character which an individual 
presented to the world, the part he enacted in 
social life. The part might be genuine or feigned, 



ESS A YS. 279 

guise or disguise, nature or art. Livy says, perso- 
nam alienamferrej " to act a foreign part." Cicero 
uses the expression, tarttam personam sustinet^ ^^ he 
acts so important a part." But the fact is, every 
man in society acts a part. Conscious or uncon- 
scious, feigned or true, with or without simulation 
or dissimulation, every man is an actor; and all 
that we really know of any man is the part he acts, 
— his appearance in the eyes of his fellow-men. 
The real man is^ never seen, but only his simula- 
crum. And as that simulacrum is inseparable 
from the individual, as it represents the individual 
to his kind, so the word persona came to signify 
the individual himself. Mea persona^ or nostra 
persona^ says Cicero ; that is, " I myself." 

We use " person " in the same sense ; we say 
indiflferently " person " or " individual," making no 
distinction between the two. For ordinary pur- 
poses we are justified in so doing, since all we can 
know of individuals is their persons, their mani- 
festation of themselves to the eye or ear. Only it 
behooves us to remember that there is something 
deeper in man than his person, and that though 
the person is the outbirth of the individual, is con- 
stituted by the individual, it nevertheless is not 
the individual, is not identical with the innermost 
being, but something exterior and distinct. 

What then is that interior something that under- 



280 PERSONALITY, 

lies the person, — the ultimate ground of our being ? 
Most men, I suppose, identify it with the /, the 
egoy the conscious self. This seems to be the pre- 
vailing opinion ; it is a very natural one. When 
we say " I," we seem to express our innermost being, 
for the obvious reason that consciousness can no 
farther go ; the ego is the deepest that conscious- 
ness knows. But the application of scientific an- 
alysis to the act of consciousness will show that 
the ego is not the deepest in man, is not the 
ground of our being. 

Observe that consciousness is not a stated con- 
dition, but an occasional one. Being is perpetual, 
consciousness is not. The most inveterate egoist 
cannot be always aware of himself. Consciousness 
is the product of occasion; moreover, it has a 
physical origin, — it is the result of certain specific 
motions of the brain. In the case of simple con- 
sciousness, — that is, conscious sensation, — what 
causes the motion is some impression from with- 
out. Consciousness is the response of the mind to 
that impression. The connecting link between 
the motion in the brain and the consciousness 
which ensues, is a mystery. That which produces 
consciousness must of course be antecedent to 
consciousness, — consequently out of the reach 
of consciousness. 

Still less in the case of compound or self-conscious- 



ESS A YS. 281 

ness can consciousness detect its own origin. AH 
we know is that on some provocation, represented 
by a motion in the brain, it is born out of the un- 
fathomable abyss of the unconscious which lies be- 
hind it. The nearest approach to an explanation 
of it is to say that it is the product of two factors, 
— the imconscious spirit, and a human brain. 

Such is the genesis and natural history of the 
ego. And I suppose the ego to be peculiar to man. 
The brute I suppose to have only simple conscious- 
ness, not the reflected consciousness of self. The 
brute does not think I, The action of spirit in 
that sphere of life is too feeble — or, what is the 
same thing, the brain is of too coarse a fibre — to 
produce a conscious self. Neither, at the other 
end of the scale, can I ascribe self-consciousness 
to God. Self-consciousness is inconceivable with- 
out a body or some kind of framing. Its prime 
condition is limitation. Self is made self by self- 
circumscription. In order to be self-conscious 
God must part with his infinity ; that is, cease to 
be God. When the Scriptures represent him as 
saying ^^I," the thought imputed to him is as 
much an anthropomorphism as the imputation of 
articulate speech. 

Prom this view of self-consciousness it follows 
that the human ego, so far from being the real 
man, our innermost nature, is merely an inciden- 



i*4a 



282 PERSONALITY, 

tal phenomenon. It is not a being, but an act, a 
thought, an occasional reflection, of an unknown 
being in a human organism. I exist only in the 
act of self-consciousness. Destroy self-conscious- 
ness, — and there are lesions of the brain which 
have that effect, — and I cease to exist. 'T is a 
fact of vulgar experience that the ego is not, 
a parte ante^ conterminous and coeval with our 
being. There is a time, varying, I suppose, from 
the second to the fourth year, when a human 
individual first says to himself, " I." There was 
a day, an hour, a minute, of my history when, 
having for some years existed for others as a 
person, I was born to myself. Sometimes, but 
rarely, an individual is able to recall the moment 
of that nativity. Jean Paul, in his autobiography, 
boasts that experience. " Never," says he, " shall 
I forget what as yet I have told to no one, a men- 
tal transaction whereby I assisted at the birth of 
my self-consciousness, when all at once ^ I am an 
F rushed before me like a flash of lightning from 
heaven, and since then has remained luminously 
persistent. Then for the first time my / had seen 
itself, and forever." What is the psychological 
import of that experience ? We are apt to regard 
it as the rising into view of the deepest in man, 
of the whole man. But observe that the act of 
consciousness which shows us self does not com- 



ESSAYS. 283 

prehend that self, does not fathom it ; it only dis- 
tinguishes it from other selves and the outside 
world, our own bodies included. It is a flash 
which momentarily defines our individuality, — 
defines it laterally, but not vertically ; it does not 
reach to the root of our being. In the moment of 
intensest self-consciousness we bear, not the root, 
but the root us. 

The question recurs, then. What is the inner- 
most nature in man ? What is that interior being 
which underlies the person, and which underlies 
the conscious self ? To that question the only hon- 
est answer is a confession of ignorance. "No one," 
says Von Hartmann, "knows directly the uncon- 
scious subject of his own consciousness ; he knows 
of it only as the secret psychical cause of his con- 
sciousness." Respecting this unknown being there 
are two theories to choose between. The one 
coincides with the common belief of a separate 
individual soul as the ground and matrix of the 
individual consciousness; the other, known in 
philosophy as the " monistic " view, supposes that 
all individual consciousnesses, all separate egos, 
have the one universal Being for their common 
ground. The latter view has found its latest and 
ablest representative in the author just named. 
" The resistance to this view," says Von Hartmann 
again, "is only the old prejudice that conscious- 



284 PERSONALITY. 

ncss is the soul. So long as that prejudice has 
not been overcome, and every secret remnant of 
it completely annihilated, the all-oneness of the 
Unconscious will be veiled. Only when it is un- 
derstood that consciousness is not essential, but 
phenomenal, appertains not to the being, but to the 
appearance; that, accordingly, the multifoldness 
of consciousness is but a multifold manifestation 
of the One, — only then will it be possible to eman- 
cipate oneself from the dominion of the practical 
instinct which clamors perpetually, *I,' *I,' and 
to comprehend the beings-unity of all apparent 
individuals, bodily and spiritual." 

The first theory is best represented in Leibniz's 
Monadology. According to that great thinker, the 
human organism is an aggregation of indivisible 
entities, of which the central or regent entity, be- 
ing capable of self-consciousness, may be called soul 
par excellence J to distinguish it from the others, 
to which he gives the name of "Monads." 

I do not care to undertake the advocacy of 
either of these views, nor do I feel myself called 
upon to declare to which of the two I incline. 
I will only remark, in passing, that if this con- 
ference is to be — what, as I understand, the 
planners of it proposed to themselves — a confer- 
ence of theologians ; if we meet here on scientific 
ground, and not on the basis of practical religion. 



ESSAYS. 285 

— then current beliefs and theological preposses- 
sions must not be allowed to control our decisions 
of the subjects discussed. 

We have, then, these three constituents of our 
humanity: 1. The unknown factor which con- 
stitutes the ground of our being. 2. The ego, or 
conscious self. 3. The person. It is the last of 
these with which I am now especially concerned. 
The person, I have said, is not the individual 
proper, but the manifestation- of the individual 
to others, — the image he presents to the world, 
his character as shown in word and deed, the 
man as he moves in the scenes of life. Using the 
word "person" in this sense, what relation does 
the person bear to the individual ? How much of 
the individual goes into the person? I answer, 
all that ^ven conditions (in which term I include 
native endowment, temperament, organization, 
education, social relations, fortune, worldly posi- 
tion) will allow. Wo cannot say absolutely that 
the individual is entirely expressed in his person. 
We feel in some cases that there are capabilities 
in a man which are not brought out, which find 
no scope or demonstration in life. But then, the 
very feeling which such persons inspire in us is a 
part of their personality. It belongs to them to 
create in us this impression of reserved power with 
which we credit them. On the whole, if we can- 



286 PERSONALITY. 

not say that the person is all there is in a given 
individual, wo can say it is all there is of him. 
It is all, at least, that we know of him. It is all 
that concerns the world. If we would but see it, 
it is all that really concerns ourselves. 

It is here that I would lay the emphasis of im- 
mortality. That the soul, the innermost being, is 
immortal, requires no proof. It belongs to the 
nature, to the very definition, of an entity to be 
indestructible. What most concerns us in this 
connection is the all- important fact of the im- 
mortality of the person, — of the character we pre- 
sent, the part we enact in the scenes of life. That 
is the tnie mane%^ — that which remains of us when 
the fleshly form has vanished out of sight. To live 
on this earth is not to live while the body lasts, 
and then no more, it is to live here forever. We 
are perpetually casting ourselves into our action, 
and the cast remains ; we leave our duplicate be- 
hind us when we die. "I am with you always, 
unto tlic end of the world," said Jesus to his dis- 
ciples when about to vanish from their sight. The 
saying has been verified through all these ages, is 
still verified in the consciousness of the Christian 
Church. Christ is still a denizen of earth, — still 
richly, beneficently, divinely with us in the image 
of himself which he stamped on the world ; he is 
with us in the faiths and charities which bear his 



mm 



ESSAYS. 287 

name, — nearer to us at this moment than he was 
to those first disciples who sat with him at the 
same board and drank of the same cup.^ That 
divine man is but one instance pre-eminent among 
many. We recognize in his case that persistency 
of person which is true in all cases. We recognize 
it in the men of exceptional genius or piety, — 
the prophets, sages, teachers, singers who have 
stretched an intellectual firmament over this 
work-a-day world, and set their beaming thoughts 
in it for sun and stars to light up our life. We do 
not recognize it, but nevertheless it is true of all 
who have lived and labored in earthly places of 
every kind and degree. All who were once here 
are still here: their works are they, their words 
are they; and though word and work be forgot- 
ten, their influence for good or evil survives, — their 
person is immortal. In one of the old religions 
it was taught that the soul of the deceased on its 
way to heaven or hell must traverse a narrow bridge 
across a gulf of fire. In that passage it encoun- 
ters a spectre, which being interrogated, answers, 
" I am the spirit of thy life." Visible or invisible, 
recognized or not, in the case of every soul that 

^ The bodilj presence of a man is not that which best roTeals 
him, — rather, it is something which intervenes between him and 
ns. Detached from the body, divested of all that is extrinsic and 
accidental, he is seen in his own light, in aU his sides and pro- 
portions, the immortal person. 






288 PERSONALITY. 

has borne the burden of this mortal that spirit stir* 
vives, — the spirit of the life. Earth teems with 
such. The world of spirits is all about us, — not 
in the coarse sense of swarming entities lurking 
in the air, but in the sense of ideas and influences 
derived from all the past. 

Grandly George Eliot breathes the wish, — 

'' Oh may I join the choir invisible 
Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence, — live 
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars. 

... So to live is heaven, — 
To make undying music in the world. 

. . . May I reach 
That purest heaven, — be to other souls 
The cup of strength in some great agony, 
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love. 
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused. 
And in diffusion ever more intense. 
So shall I join the choir invisible 
Whose music is the gladness of the world." 

Tlie air we breathe is thick with the influences, 
good and bad, which successive generations have 
put forth. Every individual in all those genera- 
tions has contributed something by his character 
and life to make the world what it is. The hum- 
blest and most obscure has contributed something. 
The humblest and most obscure that has ever 
lived in this world lives here forever. This is what 
I understand by personal immortality. It is the 



MMIHil 



ESSA YS. 289 

only immortality which a wise man need con- 
cern himself about; and for him who is careless 
of this, no other immortality will yield any satis-] 
fying fruit. 

There is another branch of this subject, " Per- 
sonality," which perhaps it was expected that I 
should discuss, — personality as predicated of God. 

In what sense can we speak of God as person ? 
Recurring to my fundamental position, that the 
person is not the being as such, but the being in 
action, — self-presentment, manifestation, — I an- 
swer that all we can know of God is his personal- 
ity : the manifestation of himself in action. Crea- 
tion, providence, revelation, moral government, — 
these constitute the personality of God: his theo- 
phanies are his person. Beyond these we cannot 
penetrate. We must not confuse the manifested 
God with the transcendental ground of the mani- 
festation, — the revealed with the absolute unre- 
vealable. When asked if I believe in a personal 
God, I might answer, I believe in no other. 
But I seem to detect in that question a latent im- 
pression of a limiting form, — a God existing in 
spatial separation from the All. 

Mr. Matthew Arnold, the English dogmatist, 
hugs himself with his definition of God, protruded 
with wearisome iteration, in his ^* God and the 

19 



•-•-•-- "^ 



290 PERSONALITY. 

Bible," "The Eternal, not ourselves, that makes 
for righteousness," — surely the thinnest film of 
Godhead that ever pretended to the honors of 
theism; scant pattern with which to clothe the 
spirit of devotion! The moral order of the imi- 
verse which Mr. Arnold, affecting simplicity, has 
chosen to designate in this roundabout way, is 
but one of the modes of deity. It cannot in any 
proper sense be said to constitute deity; for 
though practically, for human use, the moral order 
is ultimate, it can never be ultimate to speculative 
thought, but refers us at once to an ordering Will 
as its origin and law. Kant, in the '^ Critique of 
Practical Reason," has indicated tliis connection. 
The moral law, he argues, commands us to seek 
the best good of society. The possibility of that 
good is implied in the law which requires us to 
seek it. But the highest good is possible only 
through the adaptation of Nature to that result; 
that is, through the consent of Nature with the 
moral law. But the moral law itself affords not 
the slightest ground for a necessary agreement 
between well-doing and well-being, between right- 
eousness and blessedness. The subject of that law 
is himself a part of Nature, and therefore depend- 
ent upon it; he cannot force its agreement with 
the law. " Consequently " (I translate literally), 
" the existence is postulated of a Cause of universal 



ESS A YS. 291 

Nature, distinct from Nature, which shall contain 
the ground of this connection; to wit, the exact 
correspondence between blessedness and righteous- 
ness," — that is, God is the postulate of practical 
reason. "The highest good for the world," he 
continues, " is possible only so far as we assume a 
supreme Nature which exercises a causality com- 
mensurate with moral sentiment." 

The phrase " not ourselves," " the Eternal, not 
ourselves," etc., is peculiarly unfortunate, since it 
is precisely in ourselves and through ourselves that 
the eternal moral lives and works. If Mr. Arnold 
means to say simply that we did not make our- 
selves, he says what no one will dispute, but what 
hardly deserved such pompous enunciation, or re- 
quired to be erected into a " rigorous and vigorous" 
theory. It was written long ago, " Se hath made us, 
and not we ourselves." This venerable saying, of 
which the latter clause is a fact of consciousness, in 
one or another sense is accepted by all. The ques- 
tion is what we mean by " He," — whether blind 
Force, or intelligent Will. It is that which fixes 
the dividing lino between theism and atheism. 

Our dogmatist will have no God who thinks and 
loves. Such a God, he insists, is but "a magnified, 
non-natural man." " Thinking" and " loving," I 
admit, are unscientific terms as applied to deity ; 
they are anthropomorphisms. But I maintain 



■ J " — ' ..i. ^" I t 9)^m 



!!■ «■<! i^- 



292 PERSONALITY. 

that they are necessary anthropomorphisms; reli- 
gion cannot do without them. Mr. Arnold, though 
writing professedly in the interest of religion, does 
not, it seems to mo, suflSciently appreciate the exi- 
gencies of religion. He would have everything 
rationalized ; he would have scientific statements, 
abstract formulae. But abstract formulas belong 
not to religion, but to science. Religion is not a 
realm of philosophic perceptions, but of sentiment 
and imagination ; and the language of religion, 
derived from the sentiments and imagination, 
is symbolical. The philosophic mind may be 
safely trusted to translate such terms as " think- 
ing" and "loving," applied to God, into their 
philosophic equivalents ; but religion reduced to 
such formulae as " the Eternal, not ourselves," and 
religion metamorphosed into this new gospel ac- 
cording to Matthew, would become too volatil- 
ized for purposes of worship. Such a religion 
could never serve the common need of mankind. 
Sensible of this, impressed with the exigencies of 
religion as distinguished from science, I cherish 
the traditional phrases and ritual language of the 
Church. Whatever Jesus may be liistorically, ec- 
clesiastically he is Christ the Lord. However my 
philosophy may formulate its concepts of deity, 
the God whom I worship is a God who sees and 
hears, and thinks and loves, and pities and ap- 



^ttmimmmiitmMm 



ESS A YS. 293 

proves. Nor do I at all object to the " magnified, 
non-natural man." On the contrary, it seems to me 
that this is precisely such a Gk)d as religion needs. 
Not the human form, — although, of course, the 
vulgar imagination will have that idol, — not the 
bodily form, but the moral image, the human attri- 
butes, the attributes of ideal humanity. The God 
of religion must be an intelligent and moral nature. 
No being destitute of those attributes can fill that 
place ; and of those attributes we can form no idea, 
except as they are manifest in human subjects. Re- 
ligion supposes them infinitely extended, and in- 
vests its God with their likeness. The God of our 
devotion, if devotion is to have a definite object, 
must be in some sense human, — a ^^ magnified, 
non-natural man : " non-natural, because nature is 
birth, and God is unborn. I am well aware of the 
danger of not distinguishing between the moral 
image and the human form, — or rather, of the 
tendency to embody in a human form the human 
attributes of deity. The very use of the personal 
pronoun in this connection is misleading. It is 
unavoidable ; we must say he and his if we speak 
of God at all. But what subtle idolatries lurk in 
those pronouns ! How strong the tendency to con- 
ceive of God as not only distinct from creation in 
idea, but as spatially separated from creation, — as 
an individual in space ! It is a trick of the imagl- 



294 PERSONALITY. 

nation, of the image-making faculty, to figure the 
divine presence in a human form. Swedenborg, 
in whom imagination and reason, the visionary and 
the thinker, were 8trai\gely blended, maintains 
that the human form is that in which God appears 
to spiritual vision. I shall not dispute his dictum, 
for I have no experience which enables me to dis- 
tinguish between spiritual vision, in Swedenborg^s 
sense, and imagination, — indeed, I can conceive 
of no concrete theophany other than that of the 
human form. But spiritual vision does not neces- 
sarily imply an objective reality corresponding there- 
with. To suppose that God exists objectively in 
that form, is to suppose him materially and spatially 
bounded, — which conflicts with my conception of 
the divine nature. If I am asked what form I would 
substitute, how I suppose the divine nature in- 
vested, I answer frankly, I have no substitute. I 
do not care to idolize God, or to represent him to 
myself by any mental image. To my conception, 
nothing less than the material universe can serve 
us as his embodiment. I follow the analogy of the 
human microcosm. What the human soul is to 
the human individual, that I conceive God to be to 
the universe of things, — its central soul, regent in 
all and present in all by diffused consciousness, as 
the soul is present by diffused consciousness in 
every part of the human organism. The human 



ESS A YS. 296 

orgamsm is a world in little, of which the soul is 
its God ; the world in its entireness is a body, of 
which God is the soul, — not identical with the 
body in thought, and not separated from it in 
space. This is the best conception I can form to 
myself of deity, — conscious, nevertheless, how 
inadequate all concepts of deity formed by the 
understanding must be. 

The old theology — the Christian theology of 
the fourth and fifth centuries — took precisely the 
opposite direction. The idea that the world could 
be in any sense the embodiment of God, would 
have shocked the theologians of that day scarcely 
less than flat denial of his being. The Jewish 
tradition of the entire separation of Jehovah from 
all contact with material Nature — a tradition 
which Gentile converts, disgusted with the gross- 
ness of polytheistic Nature-worship, readily em- 
braced, and which was strongly reinforced by 
Manichean influences — made the world seem ut- 
terly godless and corrupt, given over to the prince 
of darkness, whom even Luther in later ages recog- 
nized as prince of this world. God dwelt, remote 
from the visible world, in holy seclusion. But 
" God," says Newton, " is a relative term," — 
Deiis est vox relativa. 

It was perhaps a dim sense of this truth — discon- 
tent with the idea of the insularity of God — which 



I— **— w it iTl fcJM 



296 PERSONALITY. 

gave such importance to the doctrine of the Trinity. 
I have never seen it suggested, but the thought has 
occurred to me, that a powerful agent in establish* 
ing the trinitarian theology must have been the 
church-feeling of a God-forsaken world. Deu9 est 
vox relativa. There must be something to which 
God relates, — an object to that subject, or a sub- 
ject to that object. If the world be excluded from 
that relation, what remains but a second God, — 
the Word, or the Son ? In the Son, God eternally 
generates himself, sees himself, becomes conscious ; 
and the Spirit is that in which generator and gen- 
erated unite, — the ever-proceeding demonstration ; 
the end and object of that demonstration being, not 
the world, which was wholly ignored in this sys- 
tem, but the Christian Church. Being, Action, 
Process, Product, — Father, Son, Spirit, Church: 
this was all that theology recognized. Earth and 
sun and moon and stars, — the infinite universe 
with all its forces and systems, of which those 
brooding, wrangling churchmen were the momen- 
tary products, did not come into their calculation. 
All that was the Devil's domain, — brute background 
to the ghostly All. The author of the " Theologia 
Germanica" says: "The Evil Spirit and Nature are 
one." The All, as these Fathers interpreted the 
scheme of God, was complete without Nature. The 
Mother was left out in the cold, expelled with a 



ESSA YS. 297 

three-prongeA fork, so great was the reaction 
against the Nature-worship of the Grseco-Roman 
world. You know the proverb, Naturam furca. 
Do you know who it was that emancipated the 
modern mind from the narrowness, the one-sided- 
ness, the spiritual thraldom, of trinitarian theology? 
You will name to me perhaps the recognized 
fathers of Unitarianism, — Servetus, Cellarius, 
the Sozzini, and certain English worthies, who 
knocked away the Biblical supports of the Trinity 
and ruled it out of their creed. They did a 
good work: far be it from me to undervalue 
their labors. But I greatly doubt if exegesis 
alone, if improved Biblical criticism, would ever 
have wrought that deliverance which is now going 
on in the popular mind, by which, in spite of 
conventional symbols, of formal confessions, of 
labored expositions, and agonizing efforts of here 
and there a disputant to reinforce and rehabilitate 
the obsolete dogma, is gradually pushing it aside, 
and, without denying or caring to controvert, is 
dismissing it from the habitable chambers of con- 
sciousness to the limbo and chancery of things 
indifferent ; so that whereas to impugn it once was 
a monstrous exception, to contend for it now with 
much earnestness is almost as exceptional. This 
change is due to Spinoza. He, by his doctrine of 
the One Substance and the immanence of God in 



^•^-^'J~ll~~ ' ' ^'T-^li^\r^l \wmiimamimmSSm 



298 PERSONALITY. 

creation, shifted the balance of divinity from the 
realm of ghostly abstraction to the visible All. He 
re-established the sacredness of Nature, — that 
Nature which the author of the "Theologia Ger- 
manica " expressly identified with the Evil Spirit ; 
he restored the natural world to its rightful place 
in the reverent love of human kind. Natural 
science succeeded to the vacant chair of scholastic 
philosophy. Newton and Leibniz and Haller and 
Harvey succeeded to Saint Thomas and Dims Sco- 
tus and Occam and Hugh Saint Victoire. They 
thought it worth the while to study a world which 
God had set in their hearts, and in studying which 
they became acquainted with him. Spinoza turned 
the Devil out of doors of the rerum natura; and 
with that extrusion the old theologic world recedes 
more and more into dim and spectral distance and 
forgottenness. It sounds strange to say that trini- 
tarian doctrine needs the support of the Devil ; but 
it is so far true that the fancied domination of the 
Devil, and the consequent profaneness and ac- 
cursedncss of the sensible world, excluded Nature 
from that place in the intere£(t and intellect of 
earnest, studious men which it now occupies, and 
which trinitarian theology occupied then. 

I use the word " trinitarian " by way of pan pro 
toto. I have no quarrel with that particular dogma 
on account of any falsity in it, but only on account 



ESSA YS. 299 

of its inadequacy, compared with its claims and the 
place it has usurped in the scheme of things. The 
dogma is true enough as far as it goes. Father, 
Son, and Spirit, — unquestionably these three are 
in God, and they are one God; but they do not 
comprise, or do not express, the whole of deity. 
I can hardly imagine a trinitarian formula that 
would. In any such statement the categories 
must either be too comprehensive to serve the 
purpose of exact classification, — that is, to pre- 
vent the unlawful confounding of the persons, — 
or else they must be too rigid to prevent the for- 
bidden dividing of the substance. My God is not 
tri-personal, but multi-personal. But out of this 
multitude of divine personalities I distinguish with 
special note two persons, not indicated, or very 
imperfectly indicated, in the ecclesiastical Trinity, 
— Providence, and Moral Rule. Independently of 
all ecclesiastical teaching, led by my own observa- 
tion and reflection, I think I should have recog- 
nized a divine Providence in human things, shaping, 
guiding, controlling, and causing all things in the 
final result to work for good to human subjects. 
If there be such a Providence, its motive must be 
benevolent design, — what theologians call "the 
goodness of God." And yet the so-called goodness 
of God is precisely the weakest point in natural 
theology ; it is there that the a posteriori proof of 



'm^JjSJtmmsHUiman 



800 PERSONALITY. 

the being of God — the proof from Nature and life 
— is most difficult and most assailable ; it is there 
that pessimism and atheism find their advantage 
and deal their most telling blows. The goodness 
of God consists with a great deal of misery and 
helplessness and want and distress; it consists 
with extreme suffering; with the existence of 
myriads who are born diseased and maimed and 
crippled, and drag their life through years of pain, 
without apparently one full draught of the joy of 
being ; it consists with the perishing of hundreds 
of thousands by Indian famines in the absence of 
rain ; it consists with tempest and earthquake and 
blight ; it consists with the fears and fightings of 
the animal kingdom, brute preying on brute, and 
with all the conflicts and agonies of irrational Na- 
ture which constitutes so large a portion of the 
life of the world. The answer to all this, so far 
as man is concerned, is given in the one word, 
" Progress." Misery abounds ; but life is stronger 
than all its ills, and statistics show that, taking 
large periods into view, the human condition, on 
the whole, improves. The moral forces of the 
universe, unlike the material, are a constantly 
increasing quantity; and with increase of moral 
force the miseries and woes of human life are 
gradually abating. The reign of reason is slowly, 
but surely, gaining on the reign of passion, the 



ESSA YS. 801 

reign of love on the wrath of man, the dominion 
of science on brute nature. A better understand- 
ing of the laws ot health, as well in the social 
as in the physical economy, will more and more 
triumph over pauperism, intemperance, and dis- 
ease, — the three main sources of mortal woe. 
The goodness of God, impugned by the ails and 
sorrows of life, is yindicated by its vast possibili- 
ties and the ever-new-blossoming hope ineradicably 
planted in the human soul. The sufferings of 
the brute-world present a more difficult problem. 
Here our theodicy has to assume that existence to 
every creature is, on the whole, a blessing. If the 
contrary could be proved, then I confess my theo- 
dicy would be hopelessly at fault ; for brutes I con- 
sider have an equal claim with human kind on the 
author of their being for a balance of joy in the 
dispensation of life, and a Ood of whom goodness 
and omnipotence can be predicated is bound to 
secure that balance to the meanest of his creatures. 
But excess of suffering in the brute creation can 
never be proved or made probable to any but a 
pessimistic interpreter. 

The other person in the Oodhead to be dis- 
tinguished with special emphasis is the moral 
governor and judge. There is nothing more de- 
finitive in deity than the moral jurisdiction which 
the Ruler of all exercises over rational natures. 



^tm 



802 PERSONALITY. 

The demonstration of this rule is given in each 
man's consciousness in that principle — inborn, I 
think we may call it — which distinguishes between 
right and wrong ; in fact, creates that distinction 
which commands the right and forbids the wrong, 
and which pimishes disobedience with internal 
suffering more or loss acute, according to moral de- 
velopment. These three, — moral perception, moral 
obligation, moral retribution, — which for want of 
a better designation we call "conscience," con- 
stitute the Eternal in ourselves that makes for 
righteousness. They are a part of ourselves, — no 
other satisfactory accoimt can be given of their 
origin, — and they are our surest witness and proof 
of deity. Let no one think to find complete de- 
monstration of a moral government of the universe 
out of the realm of conscience, to find the Eternal 
that makes, etc., in human society, in the external 
fortunes of men. Some indications there are of the 
operation of a moral law in the fortunes of indi- 
viduals and of states su£Sicient to illustrate, but 
not sufficient of themselves to establish, tl)e moral 
government of God. A close observation of the 
facts of life reveals but a very imperfect corre- 
spondence between character and fortune, between 
destiny and desert. Obviously the best men are 
not the most prosperous. The virtues that bring 
the amplest and surest rewards in the way of 



taaiM 



ESS A YS. 808 

worldly success are the little virtues, virtues of 
the lowest class ; the great virtues do not " pay " 
in the worldly sense. And when we observe in the 
administration of social justice how the little rogues 
are caught in the meshes of the law, while the 
great rogues escape ; how the wretch who commits 
an act of petty larceny to save his children from 
starvation is sent to prison, while the financier, 
who impoverishes thousands by dishonest specula- 
tions, flourishes in impimity; when we note how 
the girl who sins through momentary weakness 
becomes an outcast, while her guilty seducer main- 
tains his place in society, — there would seem to be 
as much in the " not ourselves " that makes for un- 
righteousness as there is that ^^ makes for righteous- 
ness." It is not there, not, at least, within the 
horizon of individual experience, that the moral 
governor of the universe can be found. In the 
large historic courses "which the brooding soul 
surveys," it may be true that the wrongs of life 
are transmuted into means and motives of moral 
growth. An atoning Providence will macadamize 
the stony injustices of passing time into smoother 
roads for the feet of advancing Humanity; but 
within the sphere of the visible present these 
roughnesses are stones of offence to seekers of 
the right which almost justify the pessimism that 
swears by them and at them. Tragic enough, if 



%ihi^$fS!^^ 






^s^ 



804 PERSONALITY. 

we look for manifestations of the moral order in 
earthly fortunes, is the fate of many who have 
blessed the world with their words and deeds. What 
reward have they who have given the strength of 
their days and hours of bloody sweat to lift man- 
kind a little out of darkness and bondage into 
liberty and light ? Our imagination perhaps opens 
for them the gates of heaven, and sees them 
crowned in the long hereafter with a diadem of 
praise. But do you think that any divine soul was 
ever actuated by hope of such a heaven? What 
reward have they ? An approving conscience ? A 
doubtful good. An approving conscience implies 
a consciousness of virtue ; but conscious virtue is 
tainted with something that is not virtue. To say 
that virtue is its own reward is false if it means 
that moral heroes find satisfaction in the contem- 
plation of their worth. What reward have they ? 
I know of but one, — they increase in themselves 
the amount of being; that is, of Godhead. The end 
of all right doing is to greaten the sum of being. 
To be heroic and strong and good is the true and 
only compensation for earthly loss and pain. This 
is eternal life, which is not a thing to come, but 
a thing that is. In fulness of being we have the 
unknown quantity in the dark equation of charac- 
ter and fortune which has puzzled the wit and 
tried so sorely the faith of mankind. 



ESS A YS, 



805 



Life has two prizes which it offers to man's 
choice, — having, and being; having part in the 
goods of life, and being part of the absolute Good. 
Both are desirable, but not always compatible the 
one with the other. Heroic souls, when driven 
into straits where both will not go, where one 
or the other must be sacrificed, give up having 
and the hope of having, and find their reward in 
new measures of being. Blame not those who 
believe greatly in having ; it is impossible to deny 
the advantage of possession, the hold it gives on 
this mortal world. But ^^I have overcome the 
world" was the saying of one who had nothing, 
and yet had all. Possession is good, but, after all, 
the best thing is to possess one's self. 



80 



I a-i"*!^ 



THE THEISM OP REASON AND THE 
THEISM OF FAITH. 

SIR HUMPHRY DAVY, the foremost genius 
among Englishmen of science in the early 
part of this century, declared toward the close of 
his life that he envied no man's talents, wit, or 
learning ; but that if he were to choose what to 
him would be the most delightful, and he believed 
the most salutary, it would be a firm religious 
faith. Such a choice indicates a certain measure 
of faith already existing. It is the cry of the heart 
asserting itself against the doubts of the under- 
standing : " I believe ; Lord, help thou mine un- 
belief." 

On the other hand, Michael Faraday, pupil and 
successor of Sir Humphry, and next to him on 
the honor-roll of science, seems to have experi- 
enced no such conflict between faith and under- 
standing ; was troubled apparently with no religious 
doubts ; as much at home in the conventicle as in 
the laboratory ; never turning on the deeper ques- 
tions of the soul — questions of spiritual import — 



ESS A YS. 807 

the light which he shed so effectively on chlorine 
and carbon ; coolly ignoring his identity ; erecting 
a barrier of non-intercourse between Faraday pro- 
fessor of chemistry, and Faraday the Sandemanian 
devotee ; accepting in the one character the invi- 
tation of the Queen to dinner on a Sunday, and in 
the other submitting without a murmur to the 
rigid discipline of the most intolerant of sects for 
80 doing. 

There can hardly be a question as to which of 
the two positions is the nobler, the more worthy a 
rational soul, — that of the master, who hesitated 
before the mystery he could not fathom, or that of 
the pupil, who shut his eyes and swallowed the 
creed, ignoring any mystery involved in it; that 
of Davy, in whom inquiry bred doubt, or that of 
Faraday, who obstinately refused to inquire. In 
all belief there is choice, either active election or 
passive consent. In the even balance of reasons 
for and against, if decision is taken it is an act of 
volition, conscious or unconscious, that turns the 
scale. But faith which is merely a creature of 
the will, repelling investigation or predetermining 
the result, has no enlightening influence and no 
value as a minister of truth ; it is not inspiration, 
but arrest, — not a perception, but a grab in the 
dark. 

A third position as to religion assumed by men 



Mpi 



808 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH, 

of science is that of Mr. Tyndall and others, who, 
without affirmation or denial, simply wash their 
hands of all that, rule it out of the domain of philo- 
sophic inquiry, and complacently relegate spirituul 
truths to the region of the emotions. 

From these examples, which are typical, and 
from other examples of scientific renown, it appears 
that science, which has so illumined the material 
world and conquered such vast tracts from the 
realms of space, which has changed the face of the 
earth, affords no aid to the soul in her deepest 
need, and sheds no gleam of light on those inter- 
ests without which all that science can achieve is 
just to amuse and to ease this creature life. It is 
amusing to know that the sun is ninety odd mil- 
lions of miles distant from our earth, and is made 
of sodium, calcium, iron, carbon, manganese, and 
other substances identical with earthly elements. 
It amuses us to know that four hundred and sixty 
millions of millions of light-waves hitting the eye in 
a second make red, and that there are stars so distant 
that if suddenly struck out of existence, dwellers 
on the earth would continue to see them for thou- 
sands of years by the light which they emitted 
thousands of years ago. Then again it is an easing 
of our creature life to be able to accomplish in a 
few hours a journey which formerly required as 
many days, to get messages in less than no time 



ESS A YS. 809 

from the other side of the globe, and have one's 
leg cut off, when necessary, without a sensation of 
pain. But I cannot see that man's estate as a 
moral and immortal being is essentially benefited, 
or spiritual progress furthered, by these comforts 
and curiosities. Conquests of time and space hare 
no-wise facilitated the conquest of self. It is 
nearer to Japan than it was seventy years ago, but 
as far as ever to the peace of QoA. The scientist 
himself, if not a mere fingering and ogling busy- 
body, must sometimes be visited by questionings 
to which laboratory and observatory furnish no an- 
swer. The world which Science occupies with her 
lenses and crucibles, is ringed and washed by a sea 
of wonder, navigable only to Faith. The former, 
science, is the sum of those views which are verifi- 
able by sense ; the latter is the sum of those views 
which are not verifiable by sense. Which of the 
two is the larger domain ? Science has no knowl- 
edge of the future. If things remain as they are, 
then such and such things will happen. But will 
things remain as they are ? Science is dumb. Yet 
how much of life depends on things remaining as 
they are! We betake ourselves to nightly rest, 
not doubting that a morrow will dawn and the old 
world move in its accustomed grooves, as all our 
yesterdays have known it to do. For this assurance 
we are indebted, not to Science, but to Faith. 






310 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH. 

Astronomy predicts an eclipse of the sun which, 
some time hence, shall be visible in certain locali- 
ties. We entertain no doubt of the accuracy of 
that prediction. Competent observers of such phe- 
nomena make their preparations accordingly. The 
prediction is based on the supposition that sun and 
earth wUl continue in being until the term as- 
signed. That supposition rests wholly on Faith. 
Science furnishes no guarantee that sun and earth 
may not explode before that term arrives, or that 
some distant body, unknown to astronomy, some 
fiery traveller from the confines of being, may not 
invade our skies and dash our system into chaos. 

Again, Science knows nothing of causes or causa- 
tion. She knows only certain habits of matter 
which she dignifies with the name of laws. She 
can give no account of the origin of things. She 
finds the beginnings of the solar system in a cloud 
of fire-mist. Whence that fire-mist she does not 
say ; for all she knows or cares, it may have ex- 
isted from eternity. She derives the vegetable and 
animal world by progressive evolution from certain 
primordial cells, — what she calls protoplasm, — 
rejoicing in the thought of a genesis independent 
of any creative fiat. To the question, how came 
protoplasm and the life proceeding thence. Science 
has no answer. She knows only things, and the 
evolutions of things from things. 



ESS A 7S. 811 

Intelligent Will and a moral goyernment of the 
universe, implied in our sense of moral obligation, 
are the only Ood that reason knows ; they consti- 
tute the substance of philosophic theism. But the 
Ood of reason is not commensurate with the God 
of faith, and does not satisfy the demands of re- 
ligion. Religion leans to anthropomorphism ; it 
craves a personal God, a being not only ideally 
distinct, but essentially secerned from the world. 
God and the world, — religion demands the antithe- 
sis. Indeed, the world, imtil a comparatively recent 
period, was held by Christian theologians to be ut- 
terly godless. The author of the " Theologia Ger- 
manica'' expressly declares that material Nature 
and the Devil are one. Christendom — thanks in 
part to Spinoza, whose fundamental thought has had 
its influence even with those who repudiate his pan- 
theism ; and thanks still more to natural science, 
which has taken the place of the old scholastic phi- 
losophy. Bacon, Newton, and Leibniz succeeding to 
Duns Scotus, Occam, and Saint Thomas — Christen- 
dom no longer entertains the notion of a God-forsaken 
world. But religion still craves the separate God, — 
a Ood who has his dwelling outside the world ; in 
popular phrase, above the skies.^ Here reason is at 
fault, and wants to know where and how. 

^ " Infinite lengths bejrond the boands 
Where stars rerolye their little ronndi." 



dk^B^ 



812 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH. 

Swedenborg asserts that the human form is 
that in which God appears to spiritual yision. 
Who shall dispute his saying? Who can practi- 
cally distinguish between spiritual vision and im- 
agination ? No doubt, if I am to conceive of Gk)d 
at all as taking a definite shape, it will be the 
human form, since that is the most perfect that I 
can conceive. But the mental concept does not 
necessarily imply a corresponding object. To 
suppose that God exists thus objectively con- 
cluded in a human form, is to suppose him spa- 
tially bounded, — an idea which reason refuses to 
entertain. Reason is satisfied with nothing less 
than the universe of being as embodied in the 
Infinite Presence. 

Essential to religion is belief in prayer, in the 
hearing and granting of prayer by the Ruler of 
the universe. The belief is one of the dearest 
convictions of the human heart. If philosophy 
condemns it, better, one would say, to let go phi- 
losophy than be without it. 

Here again reason is at fault. The notion of 
a sovereign who hears and considers the petition 
of a subject, and grants or denies as may be most 
expedient for him, is one whose leading, reason 
cannot follow. It supposes the All-knowing, the 
Unerring, to act upon an impulse from without. 
The finite mind is liable to be so actuated. 



ESSA YS. 818 

Moved from without, swayed by foreign impulse, 
it is forced back upon itself. It considers, ques- 
tions, deliberates; in a word, reflects. If man| 
were infallible, all-knowing, there would be no 
arrest in his mental activity, no reflection. Can 
we impute reflex action, the result of arrest, to 
Infinite Intelligence? Can there be in God any 
arrest of continuous action, any backing of the 
current, any deliberation, where the will itself is 
clairvoyant, and seeing and doing are one? To 
reason such reflex action in deity seems incon- 
gruous. In the view of reason, the divine mind 
acts without deliberation, without reflection, — 
not blindly, of course, but knowingly, infallibly, 
comprehending the consciousnesses of finite beings 
in its own super-conscious action. 

Prayer, accordingly, in the view of reason, can- 
not be a suggestion to the Infinite Mind of some- 
thing to be considered and granted if expedient. 
Bather, it is a part of the system of things, a 
power which takes effect when not overborne by 
contrary forces, or frustrated by the necessities 
of Nature. No one claims that prayers, even of 
devout souls, are always answered in the sense of 
the suppliant. The theological statement of the 
cause of the failure is that God, having heard, for 
wise though inscrutable reasons sees fit to deny. 
The philosophic statement, identical in substance, 



^tat 



814 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH. 

18 that the force exerted in the prayer collides with 
contrary forces, or breaks against the necessities of 
the common weal. Where the prayer is answered 
in the sense of the suppliant, it is not necessary — 
as Science assumes, and therefore rejects the theory 
of prayer — to suppose a change in the order of 
Nature ; rather, that the prayer itself is a part of 
the order of Nature, embraced in the great world- 
scheme of which all the parts and agencies work 
together as factors, latent or apparent, in every 
event that occurs. It will naturally be objected 
to this view that prayer is spontaneous in the 
consciousness of the suppliant, that the feeling 
which prompts it originates in the urgency of the 
moment, that it takes for granted a present hear- 
ing, and that no one would pray who supposed his 
prayer to be, as it were, a foregone determination. 
I might reply to this objection that the word 
^^ foregone" misstates the case by attributing to 
God, with whom there is no before or after, the 
limitations of human nature, which knows things 
only in the order of time. But I withhold the 
reply. I frankly admit the force of the objection, 
and content myself with saying that this is a case 
where reason cannot follow, — where reason must 
yield to faith. Fortunately our ratiocinations do 
not of necessity influence our conduct. The in- 
tellectual and the emotional life may pursue 



ESSA YS. 816 

their parallels in one and the same subject, never 
converging in one operation, and never conflicting 
in their separate courses. A man may theorize 
freely, and yet, when emotion prompts, pray fer- 
tently, although the implied expectation of the 
prayer can find no warrant in his theories. 

So much as to prayers for external good. The 
question of prayer for internal aid and bless- 
ing, — prayer whose objects lie within the domain 
of the moral life, to which it is insisted by some 
that prayer should be confined, — admits of an 
easier solution. We may suppose, beyond the 
limits of the fleshly life, an invisible community of 
finite, conscious intelligences, whose action is not 
determined by any world-scheme or natural neces- 
sity, but free to obey impulsions which come to 
them from kindred spirits, whether in the flesh or 
out of the flesh, and to club their forces for mor- 
al ends. Such a community, a society of spirits 
united by spiritual affinities, cognizant of human 
on-goings, and banded together imder moral lead- 
ership for moral ends, may be conceived as one 
being, a divine man in Swedenborg's sense, the 
Lord of the moral world. Upon such a being 
human prayers — so they be prayers of the inner 
man — would act with compulsory force, engaging 
all the powers of Heaven to combine in rendering 
the desired help. I say of the inner man. Prayer 



^ 



816 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH. 

does not always represent the interior will. It 
may be sincere so far as the consciousness of the 
suppliant is concerned. The slave of lawless pas- 
sion in a fit of remorse may pray with fervor to be 
delivered from the bondage he loathes. But under- 
neath the superficial repentance the will may still 
be held captive and withhold its consent. It is only 
when the will prays that the prayer is effectual. 

In this hypothesis of a spirit-world distinct from 
the material, having its own leader and head, I am 
confronted with a question which reaches to the 
very foundations of theism. Is the ruler of the 
moral or spirit world identical with the Power that 
reigns in the natural, with the Author and Governor 
of the material universe ? If so, what proof have we 
of that identity ? I have never been satisfied with 
the logic of Natural Theology, so called, when from 
the marks of almighty power and skill apparent 
in Nature it stretches its argument to prove from 
Nature the moral attributes of justice, love, and 
holiness. In the world of sense the clear adaptation 
of means to ends, the compensations of celestial 
mechanics, the miracles of vegetable and animal 
life, declare a superhuman Intelligence; they re- 
veal the divine artist, the geometrizing God. On 
the other hand, in the world of spirit, in the con- 
scious human world, the moral sense and moral 
experience declare with equal distinctness a moral 



ESSA YS. 817 

goyemment, an anihority independent of the hu- 
man, a supreme order which man did not invent, 
of which he feels himself the subject, and whose 
jurisdiction he cannot escape. Here are two dis- 
tinct powers : are they one and the same Ood ? 
The old theology, as we saw, evaded the problem 
by consigning the material world to the Devil. 
The tendency of modem science is to resolve the 
moral world with its law and Lord into a process 
of nature. The theory of evolution pronounces 
what we call the moral law and receive as divine 
authority to be the result of the accumulated ex- 
perience of the human race, demonstrating, and 
therefore commanding, what is most conducive to 
human well-being. The demonstration I grant, 
but not the command. Perception of expediency 
does not exhaust the idea of right, nor explain its 
origin. Cases are conceivable in which expediency, 
except in the reflex sense of satisfaction of con- 
science, shall conflict with the right. The very 
idea of right implies an aboriginal sense of moral 
obligation entirely independent of expediency, a 
moral law within, which prescribes in some cases 
a course of conduct not at all, so far as human 
foresight can measure, conducive to our own or 
others' well-being. Nothing can account for this 
sense of right but the supposition of some authority 
prior to all experience and independent of the 



818 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH. 

fleshly will. Have we any suflScient ground for 
identifying that authority with the author and 
governor of the material universe? 

Kant, as we saw,^ finds a bond of unity between 
the two ; he reasons from the moral law to a God 
of nature. The existence of a Ood, he argues, is a 
postulate of practical reason, as being the only secu- 
rity for the realization of that good for which the 
moral law commands us to strive, the only ground 
of the supposed connection between goodness and 
blessedness. A postulate is not a demonstration. 
But what is the good for which the moral law com- 
mands us to strive? Only such as under known 
conditions we are conscious of a power to promote. 
And what is the supposed connection between 
goodness and blessedness ? It is purely moral ; a 
moral blessedness, goodness is supposed to insure, 
not a material good. No one claims that virtue is 
a negotiable draft on Nature for physical satisfac- 
tions. It is only, then, a God of the moral world, 
not a God in nature, identical with that moral ruler 
which Kant's argument goes to prove. It assumes 
a connection between the natural and the moral, 
which is the very point in question. The question 
is still unsolved. 

Is the ruler of the moral world identical with 
the author of the material? — identical with the 

^ See the previous Eesay, page 290. 



ESSA YS. 819 

Power that rounded the suns and flung them into 
place, that peopled the earth with her various 
kinds, that in one mood feathered the cockatoo 
and painted the butterfly's wing, and in another 
mood fashioned the milleped and the mud-turtle, 
and in still another the cobra and the scorpion ? 
If so, should we not expect to find in the one the 
antitype of the other, or at least a marked consent 
between the two ? But in vain do I seek in Na- 
ture for any confirmation of the moral law, in vain 
for any intimation, for any faintest recognition, of 
the sense of right. On the contrary, what most 
impresses me in Nature is the absence of moral 
bonds. I see violence, rapacity, cruelty, murderous 
cunning everywhere rampant, subject to no retri- 
bution, sure of equal satisfactions with meekness 
and innocence. The moral law forbids its subjects 
to harm one another, it bids them do unto others 
as they would be done by. But the tribes of earth 
are organized and intended to prey on each other. 
Universal internecine war is the order of Nature. 
It is nonsense to say that ^^ all Nature's difference 
keeps all Nature's peace." What kind of peace is 
that where one half of the brute creation are per- 
petually lying in wait for their prey, and the other 
half living in perpetual dread of their enemies? 
What the poet really meant was that all Nature's 
difference keeps all Nature's balance, prevents the 



^ 



820 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH. 

excess of any one kind. But who will pretend 
that such excess might not have been preventedy 
had it pleased creative power, in other less murder^ 
ous ways ? I see in Nature the will to perpetuate 
her kinds, but not to secure their happiness, except 
so far as may be necessary for their preservation. 
I see what seems to be, from a human point of 
view, a malicious multiplication of noxious vermin, 
— Colorado-beetles, buffalo-moths, canker-worms, 
cimex lectularius, pulex irritans, phylloxera, aph- 
ides, and no end. I suppose these creatures have 
some satisfaction in being ; some immunities they 
certainly enjoy, — absence of moral responsibility, 
exemption from the rancors of ambition and the 
stings of remorse. But I question if the satisfaction 
of life to them compensates the annoyance they 
cause to us. If dowered with reason, these creatures 
might complain of the existence of man, so detrimen- 
tal to insect life. But the gift of reason would seem 
to confer on man a prior right to the ground ; and, 
reasoning from a human point of view, I must think 
that the business of parasitic life is overdone. 

Can we exonerate Nature from the charge of 
moral indifference by any evidence of moral quali- 
ties in the animal kingdom? Is there anything 
that can be strictly termed moral in brute Nature ? 
The love of the brute mother for her offspring, 
which might seem to partake of this character, 



ESS A YS. 821 

admits of another interpretation. These instinctiye 
affections of bird and beast may be viewed as 
simply the cheapest expedient by which Nature 
could secure the protection of her several kinds 
in the dangerous period of their infancy. They 
accordingly cease when the creature arrives at ma- 
turity. They are beautiful to witness, but not 
distinctively moi'al. The fidelity of the dog to his 
master is a better instance; but in the case of 
animals tamed and domesticated by man. the ques- 
tion is transferred from original Nature to another 
sphere, where human influence has grafted new 
qualities on the primitive stock. In the realm of 
Nature proper, of wild Nature, I find no proofs of 
moral life, no conscience, no sense of wrong dis- 
tinct from fear, no just retribution, nor any pity 
for human woe. On the contrary, I am affronted 
with the injustices, the cruelties which everywhere 
prevail, — the animosities, the conflicts, the struggle 
for existence, the parasitic invasions, the inhospi- 
talities, the rigors of climate, the ferocity of tem- 
pests, the unsparing devastations, the rages and 
the ruin. Unfeeling is Nature ; mortal agony calls 
upon her in vain in its supreme hour for sympathy 
or aid. Nations perishing with famine can extort 
with all their prayers no rain from her skies, and 
no food from her clods. 

Theologians, seeking in creation the reflection 

31 



822 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH. 

of their own idea, find marks of divine beneyolence 
in the animal kingdom. They point to the large 
provision made for the satisfaction of animal wants, 
they praise the manifest joy of living things, the 
sports of yomig creatures, the merry gambols, the 
song of birds, the aimless ecstasy of insects waltz- 
ing in the sun. I am not insensible to these feli- 
cities ; but here again I discern the same policy of 
self-preservation which Nature exhibits in all her 
works. The brute creation could not be denied 
some modicum of satisfaction if the brute creation 
is to hold its place in the scheme of things. Some 
joy of being, some tracts of contentment there 
must be in order that animal life may endure. If 
the life were all, and only pain, it would long since 
have failed from the earth. The question is not 
whether brutes have pleasure, but whether their 
pleasures exceed, or even equal, their devastations 
and their pains. Who knows ? What we do know 
is that ^' the whole creation groaneth and travaileth 
in pain together until now." 

Unfeeling is Nature, and yet how fair! With 
how bland a smile the enchantress conceals her 
atrocities! She lures with the ravishing blue of 
summer seas, and hides the devil-fish and the 
shark that lurk in their depths. She charms us 
with " meadow, grove, and stream," and seems un- 
conscious of the pests and the poisons which she 



ESS A YS. 828 

harbors in her bosom, — the nightshade in the glen, 
the rattlesnake beneath the rock. Pregnant with 
mischief, yet serenely fair. That surface-beauty 
who will deny? Whom has it not beguiled? I 
know it well, — the peace which steals into the 
soul with the contemplation of the outspread land- 
scape, the pensiveness, the mysterious witchery, 
the sense of a near and loving presence which 
takes us captive when the great Mother spreads 
her lure in sun and shade and invites us to her 
breast I feci the fascination; it has constituted 
a large part of my enjoyment of life. But it is 
not there that I find any logical proof of the God 
of my faith. That sense of a comforting presence 
which we feel in our commerce with Nature, is 
it anything more than the soothing influence 
which contemplation of natural beauty exercises 
by drawing away the soul from itself, by hushing 
for a little the mordant cares, the vain desires 
and vain regrets, by checking the importunity of 
the will, and putting self- consciousness to sleep? 
Perhaps that enjoyment of Nature so character- 
istic of the modem as contrasted with the ancient 
world, is due to the fact that modem life is more 
subjective than the ancient, and finds in objective 
contemplation its needful complement. 

Many attempts have been made to reconcile the 
evils of life with the belief in an omnipotent, all- 



Ha" iwT ■ ■ mUa^mtitmmi^mSSJtKmmi 



824 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH. 

wise, and beneficent God. I find no difficnliy in 
such adjustment so far as the evUs arising from 
the operation of natural and moral laws are con- 
cerned. Sickness, pestilence, famine, disasters by 
sea and land, even sin and its consequences, — so- 
cial disorders, hereditary taint, — all these I see 
to be liabilities inherent in such a constitution of 
things as on the whole shall make for good and 
not for evil. The difiiculty arrives when I detect 
in Nature what seems to be a malicious intent, — 
a quality in things animate or inanimate which 
must of necessity cause more pain than pleasure, 
and the possible good accruing from which, I must 
believe, could have been secured by other, safer 
means. It is there that my theism wavers, and I 
see very clearly why Christian theologians have 
assigned the dominion of Nature to the Devil, and 
why all the ante-Christian religions have assumed 
along with their good deities an opposition dyn- 
asty of evil ones, — it was so natural to believe in 
an aboriginal Evil from which somehow all sub- 
sequent evil has sprung. 

Must I then renounce the view without which 
Nature would cease to charm ? Shall I refuse to 
see Qod where Spinoza saw nothing else ? Some- 
thing in me more persuasive than logic, in spite 
of the moral blank and in spite of the malignities 
which affront me in Nature, forces me to believe 



ESS A rs. ' 825 

that one Power reigns in Nature and the soul ! 
There must be some atoning word which recon- 
ciles the holy and the hateful, the known divine 
and the seeming undivine, which resolves this 
dualism of nature and spirit in that deeper unitj 
which piety craves. 

That word is man. The microcosm of the hu- 
man world comprehends the moral and immoral, 
the divine and the undivine, the holy and the 
hateful, in one. In man are the heights and the 
depths, the horrors and the graces; the cobra 
and the scorpion are in him along with the lover 
and the saint. The blessedest and the damnedest, 
Satan and Christ, heaven and hell, define the 
scope and measure the compass of his being. 
But a true philosophy teaches that pure, unqual- 
ified malignity is not found in him ; that in 
man, at the vilest, the seed of God is not wholly 
extinct ; that, as Emerson says, ^^ Love never 
relaxes its effort;" that the Spirit will finally 
prevail. And so we may believe with Paul that 
the creation itself will yet be "delivered from 
the bondage of corruption into the glorious lib- 
erty of the sons of God." And so we may see 
reflected in that wondrous synthesis, man, the 
unity of God and Nature pervading the macro- 
cosm of the universe, the identity of the Holy 
that inhabits eternity with the Power that works 



• ^* '' '^ f ' 



r* - - ■ - -- - -- — ■■■— ^-» ■ . 



826 THEISM OF REASON AND OF FAITH. 

in earth and time. But reason alone does not 
suffice to establish that identity, does not suffice 
to prove the God whom religion craves. 

From the nature of the case the existence of 
such a God must be undemonstrable ; for only 
that can be demonstrated which can be succinctly 
defined, and only that can be defined which is 
finite. Transcending the reach of the under- 
standing, eluding the grasp of Science, this su- 
preme truth will be likely, in an age in which 
Science is more active than Faith, to encounter 
opposition of the understanding, which distastes 
what it cannot comprehend. The atheism of 
Science belongs to the method of Science, and 
should not discredit the idea of God, which, if 
held at all, must be held by Faith. And let it 
be understood that Faith is not the resort of weak- 
ness, but a master faculty which has its rights in 
philosophy as well as religion; not the vassal of 
Tradition, but a peer of the intellectual realm, 
co-ordinate with Reason, and equally essential to 
the health and growth of the human mind. 

Faith, it is true, requires the qualifying check of 
Science, without which she would lapse into mon- 
strous superstition. But Science requires no less 
the counterpoise of Faith, without which she would 
soon deplete the mind of all those aspirations and 
hopes which sweeten and ennoble the gift of life. 



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of thought, and his brilliancy and convindng solidity of style. He consioers 
and analyses Epicums the optimist, Schopenhauer the pessimbt, and the pes- 
simism of Edward von Hartman, conceding that there may be something of truth 
and in reason in the basis of all these philosophies, but utterly condemmng them 
as false in theory and destructive of all that is best in life.*' — Saturday Evenimg- 
Gauttt. 

" This is a message of &ith and hope from a brave and earnest thinker, a 
sincere seeker after troth, who has studied athdsm and pesdmi«n as they are 
set forth by their ablest and most consdentious advocates, and whose long and 
vigorous life has ^ven him a deep and wide knowledge of books and of human 
lite. His gospel is not one of limitation and darkness, but of courage, godlinf — 
and inunortahty." — WorctsUr Spy. 



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Ushers^ 

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Messrs. Rohnis BrotJicrs Publicatious. 



CHRISTIAN HISTORY 

IN ITS THREE GREAT PERIODS. First Period: 
Early Christianity. By Joseph Henry Allen, 
Lecturer on Ecclesiastical History in Harvard Univer- 
sity. With Chronological Outline and Index, and an 
Introduction on the Study of Christian History. i6mo. 
Cloth. Price, $1.25. 

Topics: i. The Messiah and the Christ; 2. Samt Paul; 
3. Christian Thought of the Second Century; 4. The Mind ol 
Paganism ; 5. The Arian Controversy ; 6. Saint Augustine ; 7. Leo 
the Great ; 8. Monastidsm as a Moral Force ; 9^ Christianity in 
the East; la Conversion of the Barbarians; 11. The Holy Ro 
man Empire ; 12. The Christian Schools. 

** In whatever way we regard the origin and early growth of Christianity, 
whether as spedal rerebtion or as historic evolution, the key to it is to be 
foond not in its specalative dogma, not in its ecclesiastical organization, not 
even in what strictly constitutes its religious life, but in its fundamentally 
ethical character. In either way of understanding it, it is first of all a gos- 
pel for the salvation of human life." — Prefac; 

** I have read your Fragments of Christian History with instructioD and delight 
You are a miracle of candor and comprehensivenesa. . . . Yoa and Dr. Hedge are 
almost the only men who know thoroughly the whole grand field of Rccles i astical 
History. ... I most cordially send you my thanks for such an illumination as you 
have given me, on many obacore pouts of Christian History."— f. P, W k^f^ 
io tkt AMthar. 

** We do not desire to state an unqualified agreeme n t with all the coodusioaa 
of Professor Allen, and yet we are fiee to confess that we know of no work of the 
same scope which could be pot into the hands of a thooghtfiil young man, in 
wUdi he could find so much sound philosophy, valoaUe historical review, and 
devout apprehensioo of essential Christianity as he wiU find in ' Fragments of 
Chriatiui History."* — CiUbv* i^iSUMCtf. 

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pnblishersy 



ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



MESSB& BOBEBTS BB0IEEB8' PUBIICIATIOHB. 

THE RISING FAITH. By Rev. C. A. Bartol, 
D.D. One volume, i6mo. Cloth. Price $1.25. 

From tkt Boston Adoortiur. 

The book in its drift is a sequel to the ** Radical Problems ** published last 
5Pear; though it deals less with the mysteries of faith and opinion about which 
thinkers and teachers, earnest and thoughtful like himself, diflbr widely. . . . With 
a dash of his pen he strikes at forms of belief and worship whidi to him are nothings 
or worse than nothing, but to many millions of the human race have been a savor 
of life unto life, and have opened the way of spiritual illumination, the reality ol 
which no man living has the right to question. But after all, the reader, whatever 
his religious experience may have been, if he reads to the end« will find the rdi- 
gious philosophy of Dr. Bartol resting 00 the deep and unchangeable foundatioos 
of (aith in God, — the foundation on which all creeds and all systems most be 
built to be eternal 

From tko Lihorai Ckrisiiam, 

His book may not define the creed of the future, but it does better. It insplrea 
OS with **the rising faith.*' What a glorious faith it is! Faith in God, inmai^ 
in immortality. Faith in reason, in spirit, in character. Faith in the past, in 
the present, in the future. Faith in law, in order, in beneficence. Faith in hOp 
man nature, not as a finality, but as *'a becoming." Faith in man's environment 
as admirably adapted to develop him into " the stature of a man which is that of 
the angel." Faith in liberty, but not in license. Faith in the pure marriage d 
coequal hearts and minds. Faith in forbearance and self-sacrifice as better than 
divorce-made-easy to solve the social riddle of the time. Faith in educated labor 
as the best solution of the problem of labor. These Mrt a few of the ** notes" ol 
*'The Rising Faith" which Dr. Bartol blends in his wonderful Fantasia. 

From the Christian Loadar. 

It is the faith that Mr. Bartol has attuned to as the result of his studie% 
observations, reflections for more than sixty years, following the apostolic direc- 
tion to try all things and hold fast that which is good. And certainly a great part 
of what he with his constant trying has held fast to will be called good by the 
large majority of those who are esteemed right-minded and sound-thinking men. 
. . . But above all things, the writer b true to his own convictions. These he states 
positively, clearly, unhesitatingly, but with all gentleness. 

He is certainly a Liberal Thinker, but in sweetness, candor, fair-mindedness, 
love of his fellow-men, patience with their errors and infirmities, shrewd observa- 
tion of their weaknesses, purity and spirituality, he should be taken as an example 
by all the Liberal Thinkers of our day. The book has a long life before it, if for 
nothing else but its literary excellencies. ... It will be cordially welcomed by alt 
the best intellects of our day as a valuable contribution to human thought, and be 
the text of many an essay for a long time to come. 



Sold mrywhtrt, MtuUd^ post-paid^ on rtcmfi of iko /rice^ by tks 
PubiishorSy 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, BoSTOM. 



Messrs. Roberts Brother^ Publications. 



HEBREW MEN AND TIMES 

FROM THE 

Patriartj^d to iS^t i&msij^. 

By JOSEPH HENRY ALLEN, 
Lbcturbr on Ecclbsiastical History in Harvard Uniybrsity. 
New Edition, with an Introduction on the results of recent Old 
Testament criticism. Chronological Outline and Index. i6mo. 
Price, $1.50. 

Topics, i. The Patriarchs; 2. Moses; 3. The Judges; 
4. David ; 5. Solomon ; 6. The Kings ; 7. The Law ; 8. The 
Prophets; 9. The Captivity ; 10. The Maccabees; 11. The Alex- 
andrians; 12. The Messiah. 

Extract from the Preface: << . . . There seemed room and need of a dear, 
brief sketch, or outline ; one that should spare the details and give the re* 
suits of scholarship ; that should trace the historical sequences and connec- 
tions, without being tangled in questions of mere erudition, or literary 
discxissions, or theological polemics ; that should preserve the honest inde- 
pendence of scholarly thought, along with the temper of Christian faith ; 
that should not lose from sight the broad perspective of secular history, 
while it should recognize at each step the hand of ' Providence as manifest 
in IsraeL' Such a want as this the present volume aims to meet." 

Rev, O, B, Prcthingkam in the Christian Examiner. 

** We shall be satisfied to have excited interest enough in the theme to iadnoe 
readers to take up Mr. Allen's admirable book and trace through all the richnew 
and variety of his detail the eventful history of this Hebrew thought. His pages, 
with which we have no fault to find save the very uncommon fiuilt of being too 
crowded and too few, will throw light on many thhigs iR^iich must be utterly dark 
now to the unlearned mind; they will also revive the declining respect for a ven- 
erable people, and for a &ith to which we owe mndi more than some of ns suspect. 
For, however untrammelled Mr. AUen*s criticism may be, his thought is always 
serious and reverential. And the reader of his pages, while confessing that thdbr 
author has cleared away many obstructions in the way of history, will confess also 
that he has only made fireer the access to the halls of faith. There is no light or 
kwee or unbecoming sentence in the volume. There is no insincere paragraph. 
There is no heedless line. And this perhaps is one of the greatest charms of the 
book ; for it is rare indeed that both intellect and heart are satisfied with the 
same letters." 



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publishers. 

ROBEPvTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers^ Publications. 

EVERY-DAY LIFE AND 

EVERY-DAY MORALS. 

By GEORGE LEONARD CHANEY. 
16mo. Cloth. Prloe, $1.00. 



A series of Dtsooonet on the relation of Art, Bntineie, the Stace, the Prei^ 
and the Pulpit, to Morals, as exemplified in Every^Day Work and Recreatioos. 

In this fresh and charming volume, one who is well known and beloved in 
the churches of Boston sends back to New England a welcome greeting firom 
** The Church of Our Father " in Atlanta. It speaks with the same Toice which 
made the pulpit of HoUi»-Street Church a power for practical religioif during Mr. 
Chaney^s most valuable ministnr in this city, -^ a mraistry which has left perma- 
nent results in not a little of the best denominational and philanthropic woric 
which is done here. . . . The reader opens a series of chapters which )ead him 
on through studies which touch all the great influences of modem sodal life in 
America. ^ Feariess, frank, keen in their criticism of foiUes, shams, and shantes, 
they are lighted up by gleams of humor, and glow with the iridescent beauty of 
poetical imaigination, while full of wise thought and noble motive. — Ckristiam 
Rieuier. 

There are here eight pulpit discouTMs or addresses <m "Art and Morals," 
''Juvenile Literature and Juvenile Morals,*' ** Literature and Morals," "Indaa- 
try and Morals," " Business and Morals," " The Stage and Morals," "The Press 
and Morals,*' *' The Pulpit and Morals." They are full of strong, manly sense. 
wise discrimination, and noble; invigorating moral tone, ezprased in a vivid and 
vicorous style that holds the reader m>m b^iinning to end. If it be true that the 
pulpit fails to attract, the fault is certainlv not with such preachers as Mr. Chaney; 
tor these discourses have in them intellectual fibre, the healthiest moral pulse, 
and the ring of downright honesty of speech of man to man, put in attractive 
form. If it be true that the pulpit deals with abstractions, that charge cannot be 
laid against these utterances, lor the subjects are all of immediate interest, and are 
treated in a living way. For ourselves we find in Mr. Chaney's judgments littla 
to dissent from. His opinions seem to us to be thoroughly sound, and his pages 
are studded with excellent and wholesome criticism and advice. The two ad- 
dresses on "Juvenile Literature and Juvenile Morals" and "Literature and 
Morals " are wise helps to the young and to teachers of the youngin the selec- 
tion of their reading. The two lectures on the Stage and on the Press in their 
moral aspects are marked by balance and discrimination. The whole book it 
thoroi^hly breezy and bracing, and contains counsel of a noble, right-minded 
kind. - ThM UnUarian HerM 



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Price^ by the publishers^ 

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